Selective and sensitive detection of MiRNA-21 based on gold-nanorod functionalized polydiacetylene microtube waveguide

Development of rapid, highly selective and sensitive miRNA detection in a complex biological environment has attracted considerable attention. Herein, we describe a novel two step method to construct gold-nanorod functionalized polydiacetylene (PDA) microtube for miRNA detection. In PDA microtube, with a one-dimensional (1D) waveguide nature, the excitation position and emission out-coupling position are far apart, thus helpful in reducing contribution of auto-fluorescence from biological sample. The use of specially designed toehold-mediated strand displacement reaction enables the reliable and selective discrimination of miRNA sequences with high sequence homology. Based on the condensing enrichment effect, the detection limit of the proposed PDA microtube system is as low as 0.01nM, and it can be applied directly to detect disease-specific miRNA targets in human serum. This PDA microtube waveguide system can be further integrated into the chip for the potential applications in minimally invasive, portable clinical diagnostic equipment. •A novel PDA microtube optical waveguide for miRNA-21 detection was developed.•A low detection limit of 0.01nM was achieved based on condensing enrichment effect.•The excitation position and out-coupling position in PDA microtube is different, helpful to reduce the interference from environmental fluorescence.