Recent Development of DNA-modified AIEgen Probes for Biomedical Application

A variety of DNA-based probes are utilized for the detections of multiple analytes and DNA nanotechnology has been thriving for recent decades and achieving numerous nanostructures, mainly focusing on DNA morphology modulation and multifunctional systems engineered into to the complicated works. Among the numerous detections, fluorescence method is a non-invasive, highly selective and sensitive means for varieties of applications, but their emissions are often compromised by the aggregation-caused quenching(ACQ) effect, which weakens their applications. The aggregation induced emission luminogens(AIEgens) are created with non emissive or weakly emissive in a low concentration but emit strong fluorescence in a high concentration with aggregated states. Herein, numerous functionalized AIEgens have been emerged and used for detection and imaging and DNA-modified AIEgen probes are introduced. In this vein, here we report the progress on DNA-modified AIEgen probes in recent years and highlight their conjugation strategies including covalent bonding, electrostatic interaction and their applications of biosensing. Moreover, multiple DNA strands are needed to introduce into the DNA-modified AIEgen probes for more purposes. At the end, some challenges are mentioned to discuss the new trend of DNA-modified AIEgen probes.