Riboswitches and toehold switches are considered to have potential for implementation in various fields, i.e., biosensing, metabolic engineering, and molecular diagnostics. The specific binding, programmability, and manipulability of these RNA-based molecules enable their intensive deployments in molecular detection as biosensors for regulating gene expressions, tracking metabolites, or detecting RNA sequences of pathogenic microorganisms. In this review, we will focus on the development of riboswitches and toehold switches in biosensing and molecular diagnostics. This review introduces the operating principles and the notable design features of riboswitches as well as toehold switches. Moreover, we will describe the advances and future directions of riboswitches and toehold switches in biosensing and molecular diagnostics.
Keywords: biosensors; molecular detection; molecular diagnostics; riboswitches; toehold switches.