Sensitive, specific, rapid, inexpensive and easy-to-use nucleic acid tests for use at the point-of-need are critical for the emerging field of personalised medicine for which companion diagnostics are essential, as well as for application in low resource settings. Here we report on the development of a point-of-care nucleic acid lateral flow test for the direct detection of isothermally amplified DNA. The recombinase polymerase amplification method is modified slightly to use tailed primers, resulting in an amplicon with a duplex flanked by two single stranded DNA tails. This tailed amplicon facilitates detection via hybridisation to a surface immobilised oligonucleotide capture probe and a gold nanoparticle labelled reporter probe. A detection limit of 1 × 10−11 M (190 amol), equivalent to 8.67 × 105 copies of DNA was achieved, with the entire assay, both amplification and detection, being completed in less than 15 minutes at a constant temperature of 37 °C. The use of the tailed primers obviates the need for hapten labelling and consequent use of capture and reporter antibodies, whilst also avoiding the need for any post-amplification processing for the generation of single stranded DNA, thus presenting an assay that can facilely find application at the point of need.

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The inside cover picture shows the catalytic degradation of a stem‐loop motif of the structured hepatitis C IRES RNA in an HCV‐infected liver cell. Catalytic metallodrugs promote irreversible degradation of the RNA and demonstrate significant antiviral activity in a cellular HCV replicon assay. MALDI‐TOF mass spectrometry combined with computational analysis provides insights into the site‐specific cleavage mechanism. For more details, see the Full Paper by James A. Cowan et al. on

An electrochemical sensor for the sensitive and selective detection of cysteine is proposed based on a gold nanoparticle (AuNP)–iron(iii) phthalocyanine (FePc) modified graphite paste electrode.