An electrochemical microRNA biosensor based on protein p19 combining an acridone derivate as indicator and DNA concatamers for signal amplification

Abstract The new acridone derivative 5, 7-dinitro-2-sulfo-acridone (DSA) with excellent electrochemical activity was synthesized and reported for the first time in this paper. Then an electrochemical biosensor was fabricated for the signal amplified detection of microRNA (miRNA) via applying home-made DSA as signal unit. The p19 protein-functionalized magnetic beads (PFMBs) for specific recognition and enrichment of miRNA. Then DSA is combined with the long DNA concatamers, which functions as a signal enhancement platform to facilitate the high selectivity and sensitivity determination of miRNA. The usage of this novel electrochemical activity made a contribution to the performance of the approach, such as achieving a detection limit of 6 aM. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to apply DSA, PFMBs and long DNA concatamers for the fabrication of the electrochemical biosensors, which may represent a promising path toward early diagnosis of cancer at the point of care.