Chemical Annealing Restructures RNA for Nanopore Detection

Abstract

RNA is a key biochemical marker, yet its chemical instability and complex secondary structure hamper its integration into DNA nanotechnology-based sensing platforms. Relying on the denaturation of the native RNA structure using urea, we show that restructured DNA/RNA hybrids can readily be prepared at room temperature. Using solid-state nanopore sensing, we demonstrate that the structures of our DNA/RNA hybrids conform to the design at the single-molecule level. Employing this chemical annealing procedure, we mitigate RNA self-cleavage, enabling the direct detection of restructured RNA molecules for biosensing applications.