Electrochemical selective detection of carnitine enantiomers coupling copper ion dependent DNAzyme with DNA assistant hybridization chain reaction

Abstract

Abstract An electrochemical method for carnitine enantiomers recognition is proposed employing Cu (II)- l -cysteine complexes and signal amplification strategies based on DNAzyme and DNA assistant hybridization chain reaction (HCR). The reported method combined Cu (II)-amino acids complexes with DNAzyme and proposed a smart and efficient electrochemical method to recognize chiral molecules through the difference between homochiral interaction and heterochiral interaction. Moreover, further employment of hairpin DNA assistant HCR greatly enhanced the detecting signal, realizing the selective recognition of carnitine enantiomers in low concentrations. This study creatively provides a general sensing method for sensitive chiral molecules recognition without large-scale precision instruments.