A G-quadruplex/hemin DNAzyme-based microchip electrophoresis chemiluminescence assay for highly sensitive detection of biotin in flour

Target-Induced Enzymatic Cascade Reaction Method: Integrating Strand Displacement Amplification and CRISPR/Cas12a for Homogeneous Assays of Biotin

The important biological role of biotin emphasizes the need for a sensitive method to detect it in foodstuffs. This article introduces a homogeneous and sensitive biotin analysis method that leverages a target-induced enzymatic cascade reaction, incorporating strand-displacement amplification (SDA) and the CRISPR/Cas12a system. Without target biotin, streptavidin (SA) specifically binds to the biotinylated probe DNA, hindering Klenow polymerase from extending the primer single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) due to the steric hindrance created by the SA-biotin complex, resulting in low fluorescence. Conversely, competition between the target biotin and the biotin label for binding to SA reduces the amount of SA captured on the primer ssDNA. The SDA process, which involves Klenow polymerase and the Nb.BbvCI enzyme, proceeds smoothly, thereby activating the CRISPR/Cas12a system and producing an intense fluorescence signal. Utilizing this principle, precise and sensitive biotin detection in food matrices was achieved, with a limit of detection of 0.01 nM.

Recent progress of microfluidic technology for pharmaceutical analysis

In recent years, the progress of microfluidic technology has provided new tools for pharmaceutical analysis and the proposal of pharm-lab-on-a-chip is appealing for its great potential to integrate pharmaceutical test and pharmacological test in a single chip system. Here, we summarize and highlight recent advances of chip-based principles, techniques and devices for pharmaceutical test and pharmacological/toxicological test focusing on the separation and analysis of drug molecules on a chip and the construction of pharmacological models on a chip as well as their demonstrative applications in quality control, drug screening and precision medicine. The trend and challenge of microfluidic technology for pharmaceutical analysis are also discussed and prospected. We hope this review would update the insight and development of pharm-lab-on-a-chip.

Recent Advances and Applications of Microfluidic Capillary Electrophoresis: A Comprehensive Review (2017-Mid 2019)

Microfluidic capillary electrophoresis (MCE) is the novel technique resulted from the CE mininaturization as planar separation and analysis device. This review presents and discusses various application fields of this advanced technology published in the period 2017 till mid-2019 in eight different sections including clinical, biological, single cell analysis, environmental, pharmaceuticals, food analysis, forensic and ion analysis. The need for miniaturization of CE and the consequence advantages achieved are also discussed including high-throughput, miniaturized detection, effective separation, portability and the need for micro- or even nano-volume of samples. Comprehensive tables for the MCE applications in the different studied fields are provided. Also, figure comparing the number of the published papers applying MCE in the eight discussed fields within the studied period is included. The future investigation should put into consideration the possibility of replacing conventional CE with the MCE after proper validation. Suitable validation parameters with their suitable accepted ranges should be tailored for analysis methods utilizing such unique technique (MCE).