Enzyme-Assisted Amplification and Copper Nanocluster Fluorescence Signal-Based Method for miRNA-122 Detection

Abstract

At present, a large number of studies have demonstrated that miRNAs can be used as biological indicators for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as tumours and cancer, so it is important to develop a new miRNA detection platform. In this work, miRNA-122 is used as the basis for targeting detection agents. We have designed an unlabelled DNA1 that undergoes partial hybridisation and has a 20 T base long strand. The fluorescent signal in this experiment is derived from copper nanoclusters (CuNCs) generated on the circular T-long strand of DNA1. At the same time, DNA1 is able to react with miRNA-122 and achieve hydrolysis of the part bound to miRNA-122 via the action of nucleic acid exonuclease III (Exo III), leaving a part of the DNA, called DNA3, while releasing miRNA-122 to participate in the next reaction, thus achieving circular amplification. DNA3 is able to react with DNA2, which is bound to streptavidin magnetic beads (SIBs) and separated from the reaction solution via the application of a magnetic field. Overall, this is a fluorescence signal reduction experiment, and the strength of the fluorescence signal from the copper nanoclusters can determine whether the target miRNA-122 is present or not. The degree of fluorescence reduction indicates how much DNA1, and thus the amount of target miRNA-122, has been hydrolysed. By evaluating the variations in the fluorescence signal under optimised conditions, we discovered that this method has good sensitivity, with a detection limit as low as 0.46 nM, better than many other previous works on fluorescence signal-based biosensors for miRNA detection. This technique offers high discrimination and selectivity and can serve as a persuasive reference for early diagnosis.