Advancement of Nucleic Acid Biosensors Based on Morpholino

¹ School of Environmental and Biological Engineering, Nanjing University of Science & Technology, Nanjing 210094,

P. R. China.

² School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100083，P. R. China.

³ College of Pharmacy, University of South Florida, East Fowler Ave, Tampa, Florida 33620-4202, USA.

⁴ World Precision Instruments, Sarasota, Florida, 34240, USA.

⁵ Department Of Chemistry, University of South Florida, East Fowler Ave, Tampa, Florida 33620-4202, USA.

^*Corresponding Author

Jinming Kong, or Prof. Xueji Zhang

School of Environmental and Biological Engineering

Nanjing University of Science & Technology

Nanjing 210094

P. R. China.

Email: j.kong@njust.edu.cn, xueji@usf.edu (Prof. Xueji Zhang)

Abstract

Morpholino has drawn considerable attention as a result of its advantageous properties. In the past few decades, morpholino has demonstrated in applications as being the premier knockdown tool in developmental biology because of its cytosolic delivery in the embryos through micro-injection. Morpholino has outstanding affinity for nucleic acids and the destabilizing effect of mismatches in morpholino-containing heterodimers is higher than in a DNA or RNA double strand. Therefore, morpholino-based nucleic acid biosensors have high sensitivity and specificity for nucleic acid detection. In this review, the characteristics of morpholino are briefly introduced, followed by highlights of nucleic acid biosensors based on morpholino, including fabrication, analytical characteristics and biological applications.

Keywords: nucleic acid biosensor; morpholino; hybridization probe; sequence specificity; electrochemistry

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