Novel Molecular Beacon with High Selectivity Based on Locked Nucleic Acids

A novel kind of molecular beacon which was modified using locked nucleic acids at mismatch sites was reported. Hybridization kinetics of different molecular beacons with cDNA and single-base mismatch DNA, and melting temperature were investigated using fluorescence spectroscopy. The results showed that molecular beacon with only the mismatch site replaced with LNA had the highest single-base mismatch discrimination capability. Such novel molecular beacon could not only improve effectively single-base mismatch recognition ability, but also enhance the sensitivity. Probably, it was resulted by the high-affinity of locked nucleic acid. Therefore, it was expected to develop a common method for improving the single-base mismatch recognition ability.