Yue Shuzhen, Xu Xuan, Jiang Li-Ping, Yao Huiqin, Zhu Jun-Jie
State Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Life Science, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, PR China.
Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Detection Technology for Tumor Markers, College of Medicine, Linyi University, Linyi 276005, PR China.
Anal Chem. 2025 Jan 28;97(3):1739-1747. doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.4c05256. Epub 2025 Jan 13.
An entropy-driven catalysis (EDC) strategy is appealing for amplified bioimaging of microRNAs in living cells; yet, complex operation procedures, lacking of cell selectivity, and insufficient accuracy hamper its further applications. Here, we introduce an ingenious all-in-one entropy-driven DNA nanomachine (termed as AIO-EDN), which can be triggered by endogenous apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease 1 (APE1) to achieve tumor cell-selective dual-mode imaging of microRNA. Compared with the traditional EDC strategy, the integrated design of AIO-EDN achieves autocatalytic signal amplification without extra fuel strands. Moreover, the AIO-EDN leverages an endogenous APE1 overexpressed in cancer cells to activate the EDC reaction, which, however, exerts no target sensing activity in normal cells. Combining fluorescence- and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (FL/SERS) dual-mode imaging techniques, this DNA nanomachine exhibits significantly improved accuracy and tumor cell selectivity for microRNA imaging in living cells. This study provides a new paradigm to develop an integrated EDC-based platform and shows great potential in in-depth cancer diagnosis with high precision.
