A graphene-enhanced molecular beacon for homogeneous DNA detection

Abstract

In this work, we report the design of a novel graphene-based molecular beacon (MB) that could sensitively and selectively detect specific DNA sequences. The ability of water-soluble graphene oxide (GO) to differentiated hairpin and dsDNA offered a new approach to detect DNA. We found that the background fluorescence of MB was significantly suppressed in the presence of GO, which increased the signal-to-background ratio, hence the sensitivity. Moreover, the single-mismatch differentiation ability of hairpin DNA was maintained, leading to high selectivity of this new method.