Wenjing Wang

Abstract DNAzymes have enjoyed success as metal ion sensors outside cells. Their susceptibility to metal‐dependent cleavage during delivery into cells has limited their intracellular applications. To overcome this limitation, a near‐infrared (NIR) photothermal activation method is presented for controlling DNAzyme activity in living cells. The system consists of a three‐stranded DNAzyme precursor (TSDP), the hybridization of which prevents the DNAzyme from being active. After conjugating the TSDP onto gold nanoshells and upon NIR illumination, the increased temperature dehybridizes the TSDP to release the active DNAzyme, which then carries out metal‐ion‐dependent cleavage, resulting in releasing the cleaved product containing a fluorophore. Using this construct, detecting Zn 2+ in living HeLa cells is demonstrated. This method has expanded the DNAzyme versatility for detecting metal ions in biological systems under NIR light that exhibits lower phototoxicity and higher tissue penetration ability.

We report an electrochemical sensor for telomerase activity detection based on spherical nucleic acids gold nanoparticles (SNAs AuNPs) triggered mimic-hybridization chain reaction (mimic-HCR) enzyme-free dual signal amplification. In the detection strategy, SNAs AuNPs and two hairpin probes were employed. SNAs AuNPs as the primary amplification element, not only hybridized with the telomeric repeats on the electrode to amplify signal but also initiated the subsequent secondary amplification, mimic-hybridization chain reaction of two hairpin probes. If the cells' extracts were positive for telomerase activity, SNAs AuNPs could be captured on the electrode. The carried initiators could trigger an alternative hybridization reaction of two hairpin probes that yielded nicked double helices. The signal was further amplified enzyme-free by numerous hexaammineruthenium(III) chloride ([Ru(NH3)6](3+), RuHex) inserting into double-helix DNA long chain by electrostatic interaction, each of which could generate an electrochemical signal at appropriate potential. With this method, a detection limit of down to 2 HeLa cells and a dynamic range of 10-10,000 cells were achieved. Telomerase activities of different cell lines were also successfully evaluated.

The recognition of cancer cells is a key for cancer diagnosis and therapy, but the specificity highly relies on the use of biorecognition molecules particularly antibodies. Because biorecognition molecules suffer from some apparent disadvantages, such as hard to prepare and poor storage stability, novel alternatives that can overcome these disadvantages are highly important. Here we present monosaccharide-imprinted fluorescent nanoparticles (NPs) for targeting and imaging of cancer cells. The molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) probe was fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) doped silica NPs with a shell imprinted with sialic acid, fucose or mannose as the template. The monosaccharide-imprinted NPs exhibited high specificity toward the target monosaccharides. As the template monosaccharides used are over-expressed on cancer cells, these monosaccharide-imprinted NPs allowed for specific targeting cancer cells over normal cells. Fluorescence imaging of human hepatoma carcinoma cells (HepG-2) over normal hepatic cells (L-02) and mammary cancer cells (MCF-7) over normal mammary epithelial cells (MCF-10A) by these NPs was demonstrated. As the imprinting approach employed herein is generally applicable and highly efficient, monosaccharide-imprinted NPs can be promising probes for targeting cancer cells.

Human telomerase RNA (hTR), an important biomarker for cancer diagnosis, is the template for the synthesis of telomeric DNA repeats and is found to be 7-fold overexpressed in tumor cells. Herein, we present a photoelectrochemical (PEC) biosensor for hTR detection coupled with a novel amplification strategy based on cascades of catalytic hairpin assembly (CHA) and hyperbranched hybridization chain reaction (HB-HCR). At the electrode surface, thiolated hairpin 1 probes were immobilized on deposited CdS nanoparticles via a Cd–S bond. In the presence of target hTR, a CHA reaction was triggered and the exposing of trigger1 could further initiate an HB-HCR reaction to form abundant hemin/G-quadruplex DNAzymes containing dendritic DNA structure. The DNAzymes’ catalytic precipitation of 4-chloro-1-naphthol (4-CN) by H2O2 subsequently took place on the surface of the PEC electrode and efficiently suppressed the photocurrent output. Therefore, the change of photocurrent response had a positive linear relationship with logarithmic value of hTR concentration varying from 200 fM to 20.0 nM with a limit of detection (LOD) of 17.0 fM. The LOD for CHA/HB-HCR was about 8.8-fold lower than that of CHA/linear-branched HCR (CHA/LB-HCR) and 547-fold lower than that of CHA. By coupling the feature of high signal amplification capacity for DNA nanotechnology, a prominently stable, reproducible, and selective PEC biosensor was successfully constructed and applied in hTR detection.