Signal-Off Electrogenerated Chemiluminescence Biosensing Platform Based on the Quenching Effect between Ferrocene and Ru(bpy)-Functionalized Metal-Organic Frameworks for the Detection of Methylated RNA.

N-methyladenine (mA), one of the most common chemical modifications of eukaryotic RNA, participates in many important biological processes. An effective strategy for the quantitative determination of mA is of great significance. Herein, we used methylated microRNA-21 (miRNA21) as the model target to propose a simple and sensitive electrogenerated chemiluminescence (ECL) biosensing platform to detect a specific mA RNA sequence. This strategy is based on the fact that the anti-mA-antibody can specifically recognize and bind to the mA site in the RNA sequence, resulting in a quenching effect between Ru(bpy)-functionalized metal-organic frameworks and ferrocene. Luminescent metal-organic frameworks (Ru@MOFs) not only act as ECL indicators but also serve as nanoreactors for the relative ECL reactions owing to their porous or multichannel structure, which overcomes the fact that Ru(bpy) is easily released when used for aqueous-phase detection, thus enhancing the ECL efficiency. Moreover, the ECL method has fewer modification steps and uses only one antibody to recognize the target RNA sequence, which simplifies the operation process and reduces the detection time, presenting a wide linear range (0.001-10 nM) for mA RNA determination with a low detection limit (0.0003 nM). Additionally, this developed strategy was validated for mA RNA detection in human serum. Thus, the ECL biosensing method provides a new method for mA RNA determination that is simple, highly specific, and sensitive.