Recent applications and challenges of inorganic nanomaterial-based biosensing devices for detecting nucleic acid biomarkers

Abstract

Nucleic acids are specific biomolecules for clinically relevant diseases. Highly sensitive detection of these low-abundance biomolecules is essential for understanding their functions in disease diagnosis, prognosis, and predicting treatment effects. As a traditional detection method, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has high sensitivity. However, it is time-consuming and requires complex experimental equipment, which limits its application in on-site rapid detection. To address these issues, biosensing devices based on inorganic nanomaterials (INMs) have been widely used to detect nucleic acid biomarkers in recent years. Compared with organic or polymer nanomaterials, INMs have unique physical and chemical properties that produce synergistic effects regarding biocompatibility, electrical conductivity, and high specific surface area. It can also amplify the signal by increasing the signal tag loading, making it ideal for biosensing devices. This article reviews the latest progress of INMs (metal nanoparticles, metal oxide nanomaterials, carbon-based nanomaterials, quantum dots, magnetic nanomaterials) in nucleic acid detection and introduces the definition, specific effects, and synthesis of INMs. Subsequently, the applications of INMs integrated into various sensing platforms were discussed, including electrochemical biosensors, electrochemiluminescence (ECL) biosensors, photoelectrochemical (PEC) biosensors, and self-powered biosensor and point-of-care testing (POCT) to achieve highly sensitive and specific detection of nucleic acid molecules such as DNA and RNA. Finally, the opportunities and challenges faced by biosensing devices based on INMs in the future development of nucleic acid detection are discussed and prospected.