A structure change-induced fluorescent biosensor for uracil-DNA glycosylase activity detection based on the substrate preference of Lambda exonuclease

As one of the initiating DNA glycosylases in the base excision repair pathway, Uracil-DNA glycosylase (UDG) plays a pivotal role in maintaining genomic integrity. The abnormal expression of UDG in the organism is highly relevant to multiple diseases. Thus, rapid and sensitive detection of UDG activity is essential to aid early clinical diagnosis and biomedical research. Here we developed a rapid, sensitive and selective biosensor for UDG activity detection based on the substrate preference of Lambda exonuclease (λ exo). The protruding end in the substrate produced by UDG could be digested at a markedly high rate by λ exo, generating a detectable fluorescence signal. This proposed strategy for UDG detection exhibited high selectivity and high sensitivity (0.0001 U/mL) in a short time. It has also been successfully applied to detect UDG in real biological samples and the screening of UDG inhibitors.