Amplification-by-Polymerization in Volatile Organic Compound Sensing and CRISPR-Integrated Biosensing
Description
Breath-based diagnostics are emerging as effective tools for detecting respiratory diseases, including those caused by coronaviruses. The body produces volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which change in response to different health conditions and act as markers for specific diseases. VOCs impact on surface polymer growth introduces the idea of Amplification-by Polymerization (AbP)-assisted VOC detection. In this method, VOCs influence both DNA hybridization efficiency and polymer chain propagation, offering the detection signal readout in a detector-free fashion. Salmonella is listed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as one of the most common foodborne pathogens and it is a bacterium to trigger symptomatic infections while experiencing diarrhea, fever, etc. Genomic DNA from Salmonella as a target analyte can be used for assay development, verification, and validation in monitoring Salmonella contamination to secure food and food supply chain safety. The technology of Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR), a gene editing tool acting as precise molecular scissors to cut a target sequence, has incorporated with AbP to detect Salmonella for human health and food safety protection in a CRISPR-Cas12a and biosensing-based, rapid, sensitive, PCR-free fashion. Currently, single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) cleavage and relevant reduced polymer growth have demonstrated the feasibility of the novel CRISPR integrated AbP method.