Palmieri Valentina, Di Pietro Lorena, Perini Giordano, Barba Marta, Parolini Ornella, De Spirito Marco, Lattanzi Wanda, Papi Massimiliano
Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy.
IRCCS Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli, Rome, Italy.
Front Bioeng Biotechnol. 2020 May 25;8:421. doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2020.00421. eCollection 2020.
With recent advances in nanotechnology, graphene nanomaterials are being translated to applications in the fields of biosensing, medicine, and diagnostics, with unprecedented power. Graphene is a carbon allotrope derived from graphite exfoliation made of an extremely thin honeycomb of sp2 hybridized carbons. In comparison with the bulk materials, graphene and its water-soluble derivative graphene oxide have a smaller size suitable for diagnostic platform miniaturization as well as high surface area and consequently loading of a large number of biological probes. In this work, we propose a nanotechnological method for concentrating total RNA solution and/or enriching small RNA molecules. To this aim, we exploited the unique trapping effects of GO nanoflakes in the presence of divalent cations (i.e., calcium and magnesium) that make it flocculate and precipitate, forming complex meshes that are positively charged. Here, we demonstrated that GO traps can concentrate nucleic acids in the presence of divalent cations and that small RNAs can be selectively released from GO-magnesium traps. GO nano-concentrators will allow better analytical performance with samples available in small amounts and will increase the sensitivity of sequencing platforms by short RNA selection.
随着纳米技术的最新进展，石墨烯纳米材料正以前所未有的强大力量被应用于生物传感、医学和诊断领域。石墨烯是一种由石墨剥离而来的碳同素异形体，由极薄的 sp2 杂化碳蜂窝状结构组成。与块状材料相比，石墨烯及其水溶性衍生物氧化石墨烯尺寸更小，适合诊断平台小型化，并且具有高表面积，因此能够负载大量生物探针。在这项工作中，我们提出了一种用于浓缩总 RNA 溶液和/或富集小 RNA 分子的纳米技术方法。为此，我们利用了氧化石墨烯纳米片在二价阳离子（即钙和镁）存在下的独特捕获效应，这些阳离子会使其絮凝并沉淀，形成带正电荷的复杂网状结构。在此，我们证明了氧化石墨烯捕获剂在二价阳离子存在下能够浓缩核酸，并且小 RNA 可以从氧化石墨烯 - 镁捕获剂中选择性释放。氧化石墨烯纳米浓缩器将使少量样品具有更好的分析性能，并通过短 RNA 选择提高测序平台的灵敏度。
