Application Progress of Exonuclease-Assisted Signal Amplification Strategies in Biochemical Analysis

As an important member of the tool enzymes, exonuclease is a kind of hydrolytic enzymes without strict base sequence dependence. In recent years, by taking advantage of different hydrolysis ways of exonuclease and nanotechnology, cycle effect of enzyme digestion, aptamer, non Watson-Crick base pairing system by metal ions, fluorescent nucleic acid probes, electrochemical methods etc., a series of exonuclease-assisted signal amplification strategies have been developed, which have played a key role in improving the sensitivity of detection method. Therefore, exonucleases have been widely used in highly sensitive detection of nucleic acids, proteins, ions, small molecules and so on. To understand it better and apply it well in the future, the application progresses of exonuclease-assisted signal amplification strategies in biochemical analysis have been summarized in this review.

Graphical abstractExonuclease is a kind of important tool enzymes. Owing to the great advantage that it do not need strict base sequence dependence when hydrolyze nucleic acid, exonucleases play a key role in signal amplification and are widely used in highly sensitive detection of nucleic acids, proteins, ions and small molecules.Figure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slide