Sequence selective naked-eye detection of DNA harnessing extension of oligonucleotide-modified nucleotides.

DNA polymerases can efficiently and sequence selectively incorporate oligonucleotide (ODN)-modified nucleotides and the incorporated oligonucleotide strand can be employed as primer in rolling circle amplification (RCA). The effective amplification of the DNA primer by Φ29 DNA polymerase allows the sequence-selective hybridisation of the amplified strand with a G-quadruplex DNA sequence that has horse radish peroxidase-like activity. Based on these findings we develop a system that allows DNA detection with single-base resolution by naked eye.