DNA Technology-assisted Signal Amplification Strategies in Electrochemiluminescence Bioanalysis

Sensitive and accurate detection of biological analytes, such as proteins, genes, small molecules, ions, cells, etc., has been a significant project in life science. Signal amplification is one of the most effective approaches to improve the sensitivity of bioanalysis. Taking advantage of specific base pairing, programmable operation, and predictable assembly, DNA is flexible and suitable to perform the signal amplification procedure. In recent years, signal amplification strategies by means of DNA technology have been widely integrated into the construction of electrochemiluminescence (ECL) biosensors, achieving desirable analytical performance in clinical diagnosis, biomedical research, and drug development. To the best of our knowledge, these DNA signal amplification technologies mainly include classical polymerase chain reaction, and various amplification approaches conducted under mild conditions, such as rolling circle amplification (RCA) or hyperbranched RCA, cleaving enzyme-assisted amplification, DNAzyme-involved amplification, toehold-mediated DNA strand displacement amplification without enzyme participation, and so on. This review overviews the recent advancements of DNA signal amplification strategies for bioanalysis in the ECL realm, sketching the creative trajectory from strategies design to ultrasensitive ECL platform construction and resulting applications.