Molecular Beacons: A Novel Optical Diagnostic Tool

A novel chimeric recombinant protein PDHB-P80 of Mycoplasma agalactiae as a potential diagnostic tool

The aim of this study was to construct, expression of a novel recombinant chimeric protein consisting of Pyruvate dehydrogenase beta subunit (PDHB) and high antigenic region of integral membrane lipoprotein P80 of Mycoplasma agalactiae as a potential diagnostic tool. The full-length sequence of pdhb and a portion of antigenic regions of P80 were selected and analyzed by CLC ma...

Optical Fiber Nanotips Coated with Molecular Beacons for DNA Detection

Optical fiber sensors, thanks to their compactness, fast response and real-time measurements, have a large impact in the fields of life science research, drug discovery and medical diagnostics. In recent years, advances in nanotechnology have resulted in the development of nanotools, capable of entering the single cell, resulting in new nanobiosensors useful for the detection of biomolecules in...

Inventing Molecular Beacons

Tripartite molecular beacons.

Molecular beacons (MBs) are hairpin-like fluorescent DNA probes that have single-mismatch detection capability. Although they are extremely useful for many solution-based nucleic acid detections, MBs are expensive probes for applications that require the use of a large number of different DNA probes due to the high cost and tedious procedures associated with probe synthesis and purification. In...

Catalytic molecular beacons.

We have constructed catalytic molecular beacons from a hammerhead-type deoxyribozyme by a modular design. The deoxyribozyme was engineered to contain a molecular beacon stem-loop module that, when closed, inhibits the deoxyribozyme module and is complementary to a target oligonucleotide. Binding of target oligonucleotides opens the beacon stem-loop and allosterically activates the deoxyribozyme...