Vibrio parahaemolyticus (V. parahaemolyticus), which may cause gastrointestinal disorders in humans, is a pathogen commonly found in seafood. There are many methods for detecting V. parahaemolyticus, yet they have some shortcomings, such as high cost, labor-intensiveness, and complicated operation, which are impractical for resource-limited settings. Herein, we present a sequence-specific, label-free, and colorimetric method for visual detection of V. parahaemolyticus. This method utilizes CRISPR/ Cas12a to specifically recognize the loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) products for further trans-cleaving the Gquadruplex DNAzyme and depriving its peroxidase-mimicking activity. In this way, the results can be directly observed with the naked eyes via the color development of 2,2′-azino-di-(3-ethylbenzthiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) (ABTS 2− ), which displays colorless for positive samples while green for target-free samples. We term such Cas12a−crRNA preventing ABTS 2− from developing color by trimming the G-quadruplex DNAzyme as Cascade. The proposed method can detect 9.8 CFU (per reaction) of pure cultured V. parahaemolyticus, and the sensitivity is comparable to real-time LAMP. It has been applied for practical use and showed the capability to detect 6.1 × 10 2 CFU/mL V. parahaemolyticus in shrimp samples. Based on this, the newly established Cascade method can be employed as a universal biosensing strategy for pathogenic bacterial testing in the field.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.