We fabricated a ratiometric electrochemical strategy for the ultrasensitive analysis of telomerase activity. The hairpin DNA probe labeled with methylene blue (MB) tags at its 5’ termini is firstly immobilized on the gold electrode. It then hybridizes with the telomerase substrate primer labeled with ferrocene (Fc) tags. With the telomerase‐catalyzed reaction, a repeating sequence of (TTAGGG)n is generated, which is able to trigger the conformational transduction of the hairpin DNA probe. Consequently, MB tags are released from the electrode surface and the oxidation peak current (IMB) decreases. Meanwhile, the Fc signal remains stable and the peak current (IFc) can be used as the internal control, which improves the signal stability. This smart design allows reliable target recognition and the obtained results assure excellent analytical performances. IMB/IFc is found to be linearly related with logarithmic telomerase concentration with a quite low limit of detection (0.02 cells/μL). This proposed ratiometric method may emerge as a powerful practical tool for the analysis of telomerase activity, which may also be developed as a versatile tool for other nucleic acid assays.
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Meng et al. (2019) studied this question.
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