J Mov Disord.
2017 Jan;10(1):18-28. 10.14802/jmd.16037.
MicroRNA Biomarkers in Neurodegenerative Diseases and Emerging Nano-Sensors Technology
- Affiliations
-
- 1UNIK Center for Synthetic Biology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. pshah2@uci.edu yangsw@yonsei.ac.kr
- 2Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA.
- 3Department of Systems Biology, College of Life Science and Biotechnology, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea.
- 4Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
- 5Department of Neurology, Severance Biomedical Science Institute, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
- 6Department of Pharmacology, Hypoxia-related Disease Research Center, Inha University School of Medicine, Incheon, Korea.
- 7Seoulin Bioscience Co., Ltd., Seongnam, Korea.
- KMID: 2367604
- DOI: http://doi.org/10.14802/jmd.16037
Abstract
- MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are essential small RNA molecules (20-24 nt) that negatively regulate the expression of target genes at the post-transcriptional level. Due to their roles in a variety of biological processes, the aberrant expression profiles of miRNAs have been identified as biomarkers for many diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and neurodegenerative diseases. In order to precisely, rapidly and economically monitor the expression of miRNAs, many cutting-edge nanotechnologies have been developed. One of the nanotechnologies, based on DNA encapsulated silver nanoclusters (DNA/AgNCs), has increasingly been adopted to create nanoscale bio-sensing systems due to its attractive optical properties, such as brightness, tuneable emission wavelengths and photostability. Using the DNA/AgNCs sensor methods, the presence of miRNAs can be detected simply by monitoring the fluorescence alteration of DNA/AgNCs sensors. We introduce these DNA/ AgNCs sensor methods and discuss their possible applications for detecting miRNA biomarkers in neurodegenerative diseases.
