Contribution of gold nanoparticles to the catalytic DNA strand displacement in leakage reduction and signal amplification

A new model using a gold nanoparticle (AuNP)–DNA system to constrain leakage and improve efficiency of catalytic toehold-mediated strand displacement reactions was outlined. A 10-bp spacer on AuNPs and fourfold amount of fuels were determined for good performance of this model with an optimized toehold strategy. After the reaction at 25 °C for 10 h, a 258 pM target could be identified, which is a remarkable improvement compared with the traditional AuNP–DNA system without fuel. Moreover, this model was also studied to differentiate specific single nucleotide polymorphism on target with superior selection factors. This model may help by introducing a proposition of target detection to guide further investigation.