Biosensing Amplification by Hybridization Chain Reaction on Phase-Sensitive Surface Plasmon Resonance

Abstract

Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) is widely used in biological and chemical sensing with fascinating properties. However, the application of SPR to detect trace targets is hampered by non-specific binding and poor signal. A variety of approaches for amplification have been explored to overcome this deficiency including DNA aptamers as versatile target detection tools. Hybridization chain reaction (HCR) is a high-efficiency enzyme-free DNA amplification method operated at room temperature, in which two stable species of DNA hairpins coexist in solution until the introduction of the initiator strand triggers a cascade of hybridization events. At an optimal salt condition, as the concentrations of H1 and H2 increased, the HCR signals were enhanced, leading to signal amplification reaching up to 6.5-fold of the detection measure at 30 min. This feature enables DNA to act as an amplifying transducer for biosensing applications to provide an enzyme-free alternative that can easily detect complex DNA sequences. Improvement of more diverse recognition events can be achieved by integrating HCR with a phase-sensitive SPR (pSPR)-tested aptamer stimulus. This work seeks to establish pSPR aptamer system for highly informative sensing by means of an amplification HCR. Thus, combining pSPR and HCR technologies provide an expandable platform for sensitive biosensing.

Molecularly Imprinting–Aptamer Techniques and Their Applications in Molecular Recognition

“…The ability of MIPs to recognize targeted analyte molecules is influenced by many factors, including ionic strength, pH, solution polarity and polymer type and size [ 12 ]. Aptamers were first proposed by Andrew Ellingtin and Jack Szostak in 1990 [ 13 ] and were screened from synthetic high-capacity single-stranded random oligonucleotide libraries through the systematic evolution of ligands and an exponential enrichment technique (SELEX) [ 14 ]. Aptamers may directly bind a wide range of target analyte molecules, such as metal ions [ 15 ], small molecules [ 16 , 17 ], biomolecules [ 18 ], microorganisms [ 19 ] and cells [ 20 ].…”

Recent Advancements in Aptamer-Based Surface Plasmon Resonance Biosensing Strategies

“…There are two common types of nucleic acid self-assembly methods, catalytic hairpin assembly (CHA) [126] and hybridization chain reaction (HCR) [127], which have been widely used in various analyses. This amplification reaction also allows for the analysis of various low concentrations of biological molecules from crude samples, such as DNA methylation and cancer biomarker detection [128][129][130]. Compared to traditional sandwich methods with the targets in the middle, these emerging amplification approaches utilized the byproducts of the target-catalyzed reaction to generate a DNA super-sandwich structure for the quantitative analysis of targets.…”

“…Biosensors 2021, 11, x FOR PEER REVIEW 14 of 22 such as DNA methylation and cancer biomarker detection [128][129][130]. Compared to traditional sandwich methods with the targets in the middle, these emerging amplification approaches utilized the byproducts of the target-catalyzed reaction to generate a DNA super-sandwich structure for the quantitative analysis of targets.…”

Loop-mediated isothermal amplification-based electrochemical sensor for detecting SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater samples

“…Among the wide variety of transduction mechanisms for detecting nucleic acid amplification, one can find electrochemical-based sensors [27] , [28] , optical devices [29] , colorimetric assays [30] , luminescence-based sensors [31] , and surface plasmon resonance apparatus [32] , to mention only a few. Particularly, electrochemical transduction has demonstrated its ability to provide a cost-effective alternative to circumvent manufacturing and integration processes to robust devices.…”