Ultrasensitive detection of telomerase activity in lung cancer cells with quencher-free molecular beacon-assisted quadratic signal amplification.

Telomerase is an important biomarker for cancer diagnosis and a valuable target for cancer therapy. Most of the reported telomerase assays suffer from the repeating thermal cycles, laborious protocols, expensive instruments and the limited sensitivity. To solve these issues, we develop a new telomerase assay based on telomerization-driven release of fluorescent 2-aminopurine.

Development of an in Vitro Autocatalytic Self-Replication System for Biosensing Application.

Molecular self-replication is a fundamental function of all living organisms with the capability of templating and catalyzing its own synthesis, and it plays important roles in prebiotic chemical evolution and effective synthetic machineries. However, the construction of the self-replication system in vitro remains a great challenge and its application for biosensing is rare. Here, we demonstrate for the first time the construction of an in vitro enzymatic nucleic acid self-replication system and its application for amplified sensing of human 8-oxoguanine DNA glycosylase (hOGG1) based on autocatalytic self-replication-driven cascaded recycling amplification.