Double Hairpin DNAs Recognition Induced a Novel Cascade Amplification for Highly Specific and Ultrasensitive Electrochemiluminescence Detection of DNA

Herein, a novel DNA cascade amplification, including double hairpin DNAs recognition-triggered single-target recycling (D-STR) and concatenated DNA structure-controlled rolling circle amplification (C-RCA), was developed as a signal amplifier to construct a highly specific and ultrasensitive electrochemiluminescence (ECL) biosensor for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) DNA fragments detection, which not only revealed tremendous potential in avoiding false positive signals but also obviously promoted the amplification efficiency simultaneously compared to conventional single recognition of the target. Once the target DNA triggered the rolling circle amplification (RCA), the obtained RCA products could be anchored on the Pt-modified glassy carbon electrode (GCE) via the Pt-N bond, capturing massive ruthenium (Ru)-labeled ssDNA as the ECL signal tag to generate remarkable ECL emission. As a result, the proposed biosensor showed highly specific and ultrasensitive detection of the target with the detection limit down to 27.0 aM, which gives great impetus to the development of a novel specific biosensor for practical bioanalysis and diagnostic technologies.

Automated summary

A novel DNA cascade amplification method was developed as a signal amplifier for constructing a highly specific and ultrasensitive electrochemiluminescence (ECL) biosensor for detecting HIV DNA fragments. The RCA products anchored on the Pt-modified GCE via Pt-N bond allows for capturing Ru-labeled ssDNA as the ECL signal tag, achieving highly specific and ultrasensitive detection of the target.