CRISPR-Cas and catalytic hairpin assembly technology for target-initiated amplification detection of pancreatic cancer specific tsRNAs

Transfer RNA-derived small RNAs (tsRNAs) tRF-LeuCAG-002 (ts3011a RNA) is a novel class of non-coding RNAs biomarker for pancreatic cancer (PC). Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) has been unfit for community hospitals that are short of specialized equipment or laboratory setups. It has not been reported whether isothermal technology can be used for detection, because the tsRNAs have rich modifications and secondary structures compared with other non-coding RNAs. Herein, we have employed a catalytic hairpin assembly (CHA) circuit and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) to develop an isothermal and target-initiated amplification method for detecting ts3011a RNA. In the proposed assay, the presence of target tsRNA triggers the CHA circuit that transforms new DNA duplexes to activate collateral cleavage activity of CRISPR-associated proteins (CRISPR-Cas) 12a, achieving cascade signal amplification. This method showed a low detection limit of 88 aM at 37 °C within 2 h. Moreover, it was demonstrated for the first time that, this method is less likely to produce aerosol contamination than RT-qPCR by simulating aerosol leakage experiments. This method has good consistency with RT-qPCR in the detection of serum samples and showed great potential for PC-specific tsRNAs point-of-care testing (POCT).