PUBLICATION

Next-Generation in Situ Hybridization Chain Reaction: Higher Gain, Lower Cost, Greater Durability

Authors
Choi, H.M., Beck, V.A., Pierce, N.A.
ID
ZDB-PUB-140513-179
Date
2014
Source
ACS nano   8(5): 4284-94 (Journal)
Registered Authors
Keywords
none
MeSH Terms
  • Algorithms
  • Animals
  • DNA/chemistry
  • Diffusion
  • Fluorescent Dyes/chemistry
  • Humans
  • In Situ Hybridization/economics*
  • In Situ Hybridization/methods*
  • In Situ Hybridization, Fluorescence
  • Microscopy, Confocal
  • Nanotechnology/economics*
  • Nanotechnology/methods*
  • Nucleic Acid Conformation
  • Nucleic Acids/chemistry
  • Oligonucleotide Probes/chemistry
  • Polymers/chemistry
  • Protein Engineering
  • RNA/chemistry
  • RNA, Messenger/chemistry
  • Spectrometry, Fluorescence
  • Zebrafish
PubMed
24712299 Full text @ ACS Nano
Abstract
Hybridization chain reaction (HCR) provides multiplexed, isothermal, enzyme-free, molecular signal amplification in diverse settings. Within intact vertebrate embryos, where signal-to-background is at a premium, HCR in situ amplification enables simultaneous mapping of multiple target mRNAs, addressing a longstanding challenge in the biological sciences. With this approach, RNA probes complementary to mRNA targets trigger chain reactions in which metastable fluorophore-labeled RNA hairpins self-assemble into tethered fluorescent amplification polymers. The properties of HCR lead to straightforward multiplexing, deep sample penetration, high signal-to-background, and sharp subcellular signal localization within fixed whole-mount zebrafish embryos, a standard model system for the study of vertebrate development. However, RNA reagents are expensive and vulnerable to enzymatic degradation. Moreover, the stringent hybridization conditions used to destabilize nonspecific hairpin binding also reduce the energetic driving force for HCR polymerization, creating a trade-off between minimization of background and maximization of signal. Here, we eliminate this trade-off by demonstrating that low background levels can be achieved using permissive in situ amplification conditions (0% formamide, room temperature) and engineer next-generation DNA HCR amplifiers that maximize the free energy benefit per polymerization step while preserving the kinetic trapping property that underlies conditional polymerization, dramatically increasing signal gain, reducing reagent cost, and improving reagent durability.
Genes / Markers
Figures
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Antibodies
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping