Light Scattering Technology-Combined Ligation-Dependent Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification (LL-LAMP) for Sensitive Detection of RNA

Abstract

Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) has been widely used in nucleic acid assay because of its high specificity, sensitivity, and isothermal property. However, the complexity of amplification product detection is still a major challenge for its wide applications. Herein, we developed a light scattering technology-assisted, low-cost, and simple detection manner of LAMP products without expensive reagents and complicated instruments. Only needing to add a kind of strong acid to the amplification products, the amplification products can aggregate into large particles in a strongly acidic medium, and large particles can produce strong light scattering, which shows a good proportional relationship with the number of amplification products in a wide range. The proposed method shows excellent sensitivity and high specificity that can quantify RNA as low as 100 aM with a single-base resolution.