A Novel Minidumbbell DNA-Based Sensor for Silver Ion Detection

Abstract

Silver ion (Ag+) is one of the most common heavy metal ions that cause environmental pollution and affect human health, and therefore, its detection is of great importance in the field of analytical chemistry. Here, we report an 8-nucleotide (nt) minidumbbell DNA-based sensor (M-DNA) for Ag+ detection. The minidumbbell contained a unique reverse wobble C·C mispair in the minor groove, which served as the binding site for Ag+. The M-DNA sensor could achieve a detection limit of 2.1 nM and sense Ag+ in real environmental samples with high accuracy. More importantly, the M-DNA sensor exhibited advantages of fast kinetics and easy operation owing to the usage of an ultrashort oligonucleotide. The minidumbbell represents a new and minimal non-B DNA structural motif for Ag+ sensing, allowing for the further development of on-site environmental Ag+ detection devices.

Genetically encoded Boolean logic operators to sense and integrate phenylpropanoid metabolite levels in plants

“…Among these, TtgR (Fernandez-Escamilla et al, 2015), CouR (Hirakawa et al, 2012), PadR (Tran et al, 2008), FdeR (Marin et al, 2013), andFerC (Kasai et al, 2012) are responsive to phenylpropanoid-related molecules, making them good sensor candidates to engineer plants with the goal of manipulating the synthesis of phenylpropanoid-derived metabolites. In fact, several of these sensors have been deployed in microbial systems to engineer phenylpropanoid-producing strains (Zhang et al, 2023). These aTFs can sense the metabolic status of the microbial cell, thereby providing dynamic regulation of an introduced pathway based on metabolite levels.…”