An all-deoxyribonucleic acid circuit for detection of human telomerase activity in solution and on paper

We report on the design of a simple all-DNA circuit with dual functions of signal amplification and signal reporting and its use for detection of human telomerase activity from cancer cells. The system utilizes a catalytic hairpin assembly (CHA) reaction for amplification, which produces split G-quadruplex outputs that assemble to form complete guanine quadruplex structures as reporting modules. As designed, a linear DNA sequence (the target) …