DNA methylation at cytosine/guanine dinucleotide islands (CpGIs) is the most prominent epigenetic modification in prokaryotic and eukaryotic genomes. DNA methyltransferases (MTases) are responsible for genomic methylation, and their aberrant activities are closely associated with various diseases including cancers. However, the specific and sensitive detection of multiple DNA MTases has remained a great challenge due to the specificity of the methylase substrate and the rareness of methylation-sensitive restriction endonuclease species. Here, we demonstrate for the first time the cytosine-5 methylation-directed construction of a Au nanoparticle (AuNP)-based nanosensor for simultaneous detection of multiple DNA MTases at the single-molecule level. We used the methyl-directed endonuclease GlaI to cleave the site-specific 5-methylcytosine (5-mC). In the presence of CpG and GpC MTases (i.e., M.SssI and M.CviPI), their hairpin substrates are methylated at cytosine-5 to form the catalytic substrates for GlaI, respectively, followed by simultaneous cleavage by GlaI to yield two capture probes. These two capture probes can hybridize with the Cy5/Cy3-signal probes which are assembled on the AuNPs, respectively, to form the double-stranded DNAs (dsDNAs). Each dsDNA with a guanine ribonucleotide can act as the catalytic substrate for ribonuclease (RNase HII), inducing recycling cleavage of signal probes to liberate large numbers of Cy5 and Cy3 molecules from the AuNPs. The released Cy5 and Cy3 molecules can be simply quantified by total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF)-based single-molecule imaging for simultaneous measurement of M.SssI and M.CviPI MTase activities. This method exhibits good specificity and high sensitivity with a detection limit of 2.01 × 10-3 U mL-1 for M.SssI MTase and 3.39 × 10-3 U mL-1 for M.CviPI MTase, and it can be further applied for discriminating different kinds of DNA MTases, screening potential inhibitors, and measuring DNA MTase activities in human serum and cell lysate samples, holding great potential in biomedical research, clinical diagnosis, drug discovery and cancer therapeutics.
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