Isothermal amplified detection of reduced thiol through graphene oxide nanoscaffold and disulfide-bonded DNA tweezers

Abstract We report herein a method for reduced biothiol detection using isothermal amplified strategy through graphene oxide (GO) nanoscaffold and disulfide-bonded DNA tweezers. This protocol elegantly links DNA sequences with disulfide bond followed by isothermal amplification methods, which overcomes the lack of aptamer for reduced thiol and then exhibits high sensitivity. As compared to the traditional double-stranded DNA acquisition from the mixture solution of single-stranded and double-stranded DNA in which the sample should undergo two cumbersome procedures of chromatography separation and extraction collection, in the present assay the GO-related separation procedures are only upon centrifugation displaying incomparable superiority of convenience, rapidity and environment-friendly technology. Besides, glutathione (GSH) as an example, with the successive amplification steps, the strategy exhibits high sensitivity and specificity with the detection concentration as low as 1.0 × 10 −10  M GSH and shows satisfactory recovery in K562 cell homogenate. Overall, the proposed method holds a great promise for physiological condition monitoring applications.