MicroRNA Sensors Based on CRISPR/Cas12a Technologies: Evolution From Indirect to Direct Detection

Abstract

MicroRNA (miRNA) has emerged as a promising biomarker for disease diagnosis and a potential therapeutic targets for drug development. The detection of miRNA can serve as a noninvasive tool in diseases diagnosis and predicting diseases prognosis. CRISPR/Cas12a system has great potential in nucleic acid detection due to its high sensitivity and specificity, which has been developed to be a versatile tool for nucleic acid-based detection of targets in various fields. However, conversion from RNA to DNA with or without amplification operation is necessary for miRNA detection based on CRISPR/Cas12a system, because dsDNA containing PAM sequence or ssDNA is traditionally considered as the activator of Cas12a. Until recently, direct detection of miRNA by CRISPR/Cas12a system has been reported. In this review, we provide an overview of the evolution of biosensors based on CRISPR/Cas12a for miRNA detection from indirect to direct, which would be beneficial to the development of CRISPR/Cas12a-based sensors with better performance for direct detection of miRNA.

Keywords:

• CRISPR
• Cas12a
• microRNA
• biosensor
• nucleic acid analysis

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 32372402, 81703270), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2020M672298) and Cultivation Program for Basic Research of Natural Sciences in Zhengzhou University (Grant No. JC22846048).