Highly Sensitive Method for Detection of Viral and Bacterial Infections

The technology enables an affordable and easily deployable method for detection of water/soil contamination, and/or rapid detection of viruses in humans and animals.

The  method  employs the extension of the isothermal rolling circle amplification (RCA) process to a RCA-stimulated dendritic synthesis of catalytic nucleic acids (DNAzymes) sensing platform.

The method is based on the improvement of the RCA sensing methods by two elements:

• The introduction of a functional hairpin that regenerates the analyte and allows the dendritic branching of the RCA chains.
• The isothermal autonomous formation of DNAzymes in the RCA chains.

These catalytic labels enable simple detection of the chemical constituents of interest.  By the tailoring of different circular DNA templates that lead to the formation of different RCA-branched DNAzyme reporter catalysts, the multiplexed analysis of different analytes is demonstrated.