Recent applications of rolling circle amplification in biosensors and DNA nanotechnology

Isothermal nucleic acid amplification techniques have emerged as an important diagnostic tool for clinical applications and food safety inspection. Rolling circle amplification (RCA) is well known for its simple, highly efficient and robust nucleic acid amplification. Besides, RCA excels through its convenient and accessible amplification requirements, making it a promising candidate for point of care testing (POCT). In this review, we firstly introduce the basic principles of RCA cyclization methods, RCA species and RCA optimization strategies. Based on these principles and strategies, we summarize the recent achievements on the design, development and application of RCA biosensors for biosensing. Moreover, we discuss the versatile application of RCA in DNA nanotechnology, where RCA acts as a programable DNA nanomaterials construction tool for bioimaging, drug delivery and therapeutics. Finally, we discuss the current challenges and future perspectives of the RCA technique.