Single-stranded nucleic acids, redox-active

The formation of aptamer-substrate complexes was also followed by the use of redox-active intercalators73 (Fig. 12.18d). A nucleic acid hairpin structure that contained in its single-stranded loop the antithrombin base sequence was assembled on a Au electrode, and methylene blue was intercalated as a redox label in the double-stranded stem of the hairpin structure. The hairpin was, then, opened in the presence of thrombin, by generating the respective G-quadruplex-thrombin complex, and as a result, the redox label was removed from the nucleic structure, showing a decrease in the voltammetric response with the increase in the concentration of thrombin. This method enabled the analysis of thrombin with a detection limit that corresponded to... 

When a metal complex is formed with the nucleic acid base of single-stranded DNA (ssDNA), such ssDNA can be used as an alternative electrochemically-active DNA-binding ligand. For example, Palecek and coworkers reported the formation of a reversible redox-active metal complex by the reaction of osmium tetraoxide-pyridine with the thymine (T) base of ssDNA, and they developed an electrochemical gene detection method based on this modified oligonucleotide as a DNA probe [3]. 

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