Hydrazone ligation assisted DNAzyme walking nanomachine coupled with CRISPR-Cas12a for lipopolysaccharide analysis

Abstract

In this work, hydrazone ligation assisted DNAzyme walking nanomachine is explored to couple with CRISPR-Cas12a trans-cleavage. Hydrazone ligation with high efficiency can mediate signal input which can be induced by target binding, thereby regulating the performance of DNAzyme walking nanomachine. The product strand from DNAzyme walking nanomachine can further activate the trans-cleavage of Cas12a. So, cascade signal amplification can be achieved to enhance the sensitivity for target detection. Subsequently, hydrazone ligation assisted DNAzyme walking nanomachine coupled with CRISPR-Cas12a has been further developed as a biosensor to analyze lipopolysaccharides. The developed biosensor exhibits a linear range from 0.05 ng/mL to 10⁶ ng/mL and a lowest limit of detection of 7.31 fg/mL. This research provides a new mode for the signal output of DNAzyme walking nanomachine, so as to sensitively analyze different biomolecules.

Keywords: CRISPR-Cas12a; Cascade signal amplification; DNAzyme walker; Hydrazone ligation; Lipopolysaccharide.