Bioluminescent stem-loop probes for highly sensitive nucleic acid detectionf

摘要

Here, we report the first bioluminescent stem-loop probe, which is 50 times more sensitive and able to achieve a LOD 25 times lower than fluorescent stem-loop probes. Chemical generation of a signal from Renilla luciferase reduces background noise for improved quantitative utility in nucleic acid biomarker detection. Fluorescent stem-loop probes (FSLPs), termed "molecular beacons," were first developed by Tyagi and Kramer in 1996.' A typical FSLP design consists of a 15-30 nt loop flanked by two short 5-7 nt self-complementary regions (stem) modified with a fluorophore and a quencher.