Issue 15, 2024

Evaluating early apoptosis-related cellular MiRNAs with an ultrasensitive electrochemiluminescence nanoplatform

Abstract

It is known that the abnormal expression of specific cellular miRNAs is closely related to cell apoptosis, and so monitoring the level change of these miRNAs can in principle be used to evaluate the process of apoptosis stimulated by drugs. Towards this goal, here we construct an ultrasensitive electrochemiluminescence (ECL) nanoplatform via the target miRNA-triggered immobilization of spherical nucleic acid enzymes (SNAzymes) onto tetrahedral DNA nanostructures on the electrode surface, which catalyzes the luminol–H2O2 reaction to output an ECL signal. This enables the sensitive and specific detection of two apoptosis-related miRNAs, miR-21 and miR-133a, with a detection limit of 33 aM. Furthermore, we employed the developed ECL nanoplatform to monitor the levels of these two miRNAs inside cancer cells stimulated by DOX, showing that the level of miR-21 decreases, while that of miR-133a increases in the early apoptotic cells. This difference highlights the distinct roles of the two target miRNAs, where miR-21 promotes the early apoptosis of cancer cells, whereas miR-133a suppresses it, providing new insight into cell physiological processes.

Graphical abstract: Evaluating early apoptosis-related cellular MiRNAs with an ultrasensitive electrochemiluminescence nanoplatform

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
29 may. 2024
Accepted
13 jun. 2024
First published
18 jun. 2024

Analyst, 2024,149, 3971-3979

Evaluating early apoptosis-related cellular MiRNAs with an ultrasensitive electrochemiluminescence nanoplatform

H. Cai, P. Dong, X. Li, L. Wang and T. Li, Analyst, 2024, 149, 3971 DOI: 10.1039/D4AN00765D

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