Isotachophoretically-driven rolling circle amplification unit for nucleic acid detection

• Nucleic acid amplification tests have revolutionized the biomedical field by offering high sensitivity and specificity. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is considered as the gold standard for nucleic acid amplification; however, it requires sophisticated instrumentation for temperature cycling and real-time detection which makes it expensive. Isothermal amplification technologies have been developed to overcome these drawbacks, such as rolling circle amplification (RCA). In this work, we use the RCA and combine it with isotachophoresis (ITP) to increase the sensitivity for fluorescent real-time detection of nucleic acid amplification. For this, we use a top-down approach by first developing a suitable buffer system that supports RCA and ITP, and subsequently show the focusing of differently-sized and concentrated RCA products. Next, we compare our ITP-RCA assay with a commercial instrument for real-time fluorescence monitoring and demonstrate higher sensitivity from our method. Finally, we aim to combine the ligation and amplification step into ITP to simplify the RCA assay into a one-step reaction. The presented combination of RCA with ITP opens up new opportunities by making nucleic acid detection faster and simpler with potential applications for molecular diagnostics of infectious diseases.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Biologi -- Biokemi och molekylärbiologi (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Biological Sciences -- Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Biochemistry

biokemi

Molecular Biology

molekylärbiologi

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

ovr (subject category)