Issue 2, 2023

An intelligent, autocatalytic, DNAzyme biocircuit for amplified imaging of intracellular microRNAs

Abstract

DNAzymes hold great promise as transducing agents for the analysis of intracellular biomarkers. However, their low intracellular delivery efficiency and limited signal amplification capability (including an additional supply of cofactors) hinder their application in low-abundance biomarker analysis. Herein, a general strategy to design an intelligent, autocatalytic, DNAzyme biocircuit is developed for amplified microRNA imaging in living cells. The DNAzyme biocircuit is constructed based on a nanodevice composed of catalytic hairpin assembly (CHA) and DNAzyme biocatalytic functional units, sustained by Au nanoparticles (AuNPs) and MnO2 nanosheets (CD/AM nanodevices). Once the CD/AM nanodevices are endocytosed by cells, the MnO2 nanosheets are reduced by intracellular glutathione (GSH), which not only releases the different units of the DNAzyme circuit, but also generates the cofactor Mn2+ for DNAzyme autocatalysis. The intracellular analytes could trigger the coordinated cross-activation of CHA and autocatalytic DNAzymes on AuNPs, enabling reliable and accurate detection of miRNAs in living cells. This intelligent autocatalytic multilayer DNAzyme biocircuit can effectively avoid signal leakage and obtain high amplification gain, expanding the application of programmable complex DNA nanocircuits in biosensing, nanomaterial assembly, and biomedicine.

Graphical abstract: An intelligent, autocatalytic, DNAzyme biocircuit for amplified imaging of intracellular microRNAs

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
20 Sept. 2022
Accepted
06 Dec. 2022
First published
06 Dec. 2022

Nanoscale, 2023,15, 578-587

An intelligent, autocatalytic, DNAzyme biocircuit for amplified imaging of intracellular microRNAs

M. Cui, D. Zhang, Q. Wang and J. Chao, Nanoscale, 2023, 15, 578 DOI: 10.1039/D2NR05165F

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements