Highly sensitive and multiple DNA biosensor based on isothermal strand-displacement polymerase reaction and functionalized magnetic microparticles

• A highly sensitive chemiluminescence imaging method is developed for DNA detection.
• Signal amplification by circular strand-displacement polymerization is designed.
• The biosensor can discriminate target DNA from one-base mismatch DNA.
• The biosensor has promising in high-throughput DNA assay.

A universal, highly sensitive and selective chemiluminescence (CL) imaging method has been developed for high throughput detection of DNA. After molecular beacon (MB) hybridized with the target DNA, the biotin-labeled primer was attached to a magnetic microparticle (MMP) surface by hybridization with the stem part of the MB to initiate a polymerization of DNA strand, which led to the release of the target and another polymerization cycle. Thus the polymerization produced the multiplication of biotin-labeled primer on the surface of MMPs. Sequentially, the horseradish peroxidase (HRP) was conjugated to MMPs surface through the biotin–streptavidin reaction. Then, the conjugated HRP was determined by the CL imaging method. This proposed method could detect the sequence-specific DNA as low as 0.4 pM and discriminate perfectly matched target DNA from the mismatch DNAs. All in all, this proposed method exhibited an efficient amplification performance, and would open new opportunities for sensitive and high throughput detection of DNA.