ABSTRACT
The identification of tumor-related microRNAs(miRNAs)exhibits excellent promise for the early diag-nosis of cancer and other bioanalytical applications.Therefore,we developed a sensitive and efficient biosensor using polyadenine(polyA)-mediated fluorescent spherical nucleic acid(FSNA)for miRNA analysis based on strand displacement reactions on gold nanoparticle(AuNP)surfaces and electrokinetic signal amplification(ESA)on a microfluidic chip.In this FSNA,polyA-DNA biosensor was anchored on AuNP surfaces via intrinsic affinity between adenine and Au.The upright conformational polyA-DNA recognition block hybridized with 6-carboxyfluorescein-labeled reporter-DNA,resulting in fluores-cence quenching of FSNA probes induced by AuNP-based resonance energy transfer.Reporter DNA was replaced in the presence of target miRNA,leading to the recovery of reporter-DNA fluorescence.Sub-sequently,reporter-DNAs were accumulated and detected in the front of with Nafion membrane in the microchannel by ESA.Our method showed high selectivity and sensitivity with a limit of detection of 1.3 pM.This method could also be used to detect miRNA-21 in human serum and urine samples,with re-coveries of 104.0％-113.3％and 104.9％-108.0％,respectively.Furthermore,we constructed a chip with three parallel channels for the simultaneous detection of multiple tumor-related miRNAs(miRNA-21,miRNA-141,and miRNA-375),which increased the detection efficiency.Our universal method can be applied to other DNA/RNA analyses by altering recognition sequences.
ABSTRACT
Dirofilaria immitis (heartworm) infections affect domestic dogs, cats, and various wild mammals with increasing incidence in temperate and tropical areas. More sensitive antibody detection methodologies are required to diagnose asymptomatic dirofilariasis with low worm burdens. Applying current transcriptomic technologies would be useful to discover potential diagnostic markers for D. immitis infection. A filarial homologue of the mammalian translationally controlled tumor protein (TCTP) was initially identified by screening the assembled transcriptome of D. immitis (DiTCTP). A BLAST analysis suggested that the DiTCTP gene shared the highest similarity with TCTP from Loa loa at protein level (97%). A histidine-tagged recombinant DiTCTP protein (rDiTCTP) of 40 kDa expressed in Escherichia coli BL21 (DE3) showed immunoreactivity with serum from a dog experimentally infected with heartworms. Localization studies illustrated the ubiquitous presence of rDiTCTP protein in the lateral hypodermal chords, dorsal hypodermal chord, muscle, intestine, and uterus in female adult worms. Further studies on D. immitis-derived TCTP are warranted to assess whether this filarial protein could be used for a diagnostic purpose.