The recent advances in electrochemical biosensors for miRNA quantification

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short ribonucleic acid molecules (~19-23 nucleotides), that can play important roles in the regulation of diverse biological processes. Their expression level is tissueor disease-specific and aberrantly, expressed miRNAs have considerable potential to use asbiomarkers. Moreover, they are perfectly stable in serum/plasma and also their sampling would be easy and non-invasive. Microarrays, Northern Blotting, Reverse Transcription PolymeraseChain Reaction (RT-PCR), In Situ Hybridization (ISH) are Major conventional methods for quantification of miRNA. In addition to them, the different types of sensors have been developed and commercialized so far, that majority of them are electrochemical. Electrochemicalbiosensors combining the selective biochemical recognition with the high sensitivity of electrochemical detection. They are inexpensive, capable of being used by semi-skilled operators. Also, their measurement is rapid and need a small volume of sample. This review embraces new approaches used in the electrochemical biosensors platform for miRNA quantification. Different types of electrochemical labels and signal amplification methods havebeen applied in electrochemical biosensors so far, since the first biosensor have developed in this case at 2007 (5). These innovations are included using biotin-streptavidin system (6-9), application of enzymes (10-12), or using new components as signal transduction such as protein 19 (p19) (13); conjugated copolymer (14), electroactive ferroceneboronic acid (FBA) (15). The table 1 is representing brief review of some specifications of selected electrochemical miRNA biosensors which have been developed so far

Keywords:

miRNA , electrochemical , Nanobiosensor