Construction of Fluorescent G-Quadruplex Nanowires for Label-Free and Accurate Monitoring of Circular RNAs in Breast Cancer Cells and Tissues with Low Background

Anal Chem. 2024 Jan 9;96(1):599-605. doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.3c05116. Epub 2023 Dec 29.

Abstract

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) represent an emerging category of endogenous transcripts characterized by long half-life time, covalently closed structures, and cell-/tissue-specific expression patterns, making them potential disease biomarkers. Herein, we demonstrate the construction of fluorescent G-quadruplex nanowires for label-free and accurate monitoring of circular RNAs in breast cancer cells and tissues by integrating proximity ligation-rolling circle amplification cascade with lighting up G-quadruplex. The presence of target circRNA facilitates the SplintR ligase-mediated ligation of the padlock probe. Upon the addition of primers, the ligated padlock probe can serve as a template to initiate subsequent rolling circle amplification (RCA), generating numerous long G-quadruplex nanowires that can incorporate with thioflavin T (ThT) to generate a remarkably improved fluorescence signal. Benefiting from good specificity of SplintR ligase-mediated ligation reaction and exponential amplification efficiency of RCA, this strategy can sensitively detect target circRNA with a limit of detection of 4.65 × 10-18 M. Furthermore, this method can accurately measure cellular circRNA expression with single-cell sensitivity and discriminate the circRNA expression between healthy para-carcinoma tissues and breast cancer tissues, holding great potential in studying the pathological roles of circRNA and clinic diagnostics.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Breast Neoplasms* / diagnosis
  • Breast Neoplasms* / genetics
  • Female
  • Fluorescent Dyes / chemistry
  • Humans
  • Ligases
  • Nanowires*
  • Nucleic Acid Amplification Techniques / methods
  • RNA, Circular

Substances

  • RNA, Circular
  • Fluorescent Dyes
  • Ligases