Recent advances of nanoparticles-assisted CRISPR/Cas biosensors

Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) technology has displayed great potential in the realm of specific molecular diagnostics with high sensitivity. Meanwhile, many nanoparticles exhibit unique chemical and physical properties, such as excellent catalysis, easily tunable size, large surface to volume ratio and the desired signal transduction mechanism, which makes them excellent candidates for the fabrication of novel biosensors. The combination of CRISPR/Cas technology and nanoparticles can effectively improve the poor stability and limited analytical performance of CRISPR/Cas biosensors. Moreover, the combination of two advanced technologies can leverage the properties of nanoparticles to develop new types of biosensors that can be used in various ways of reading signal readout. We herein summarized the types and functions of various nanoparticles in CRISPR/Cas biosensors based on distinct signal reading modes, and systematically described the working mechanism and performance of representative and significant works. Recent applications and further challenges of various nanoparticles-assisted CRISPR/Cas biosensors were also discussed according to the most recent developments.