Department of Chemical Biology
Yang's Lab,Department of Chemical Biology, Xiamen University
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Professor Yang

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Yang's Laboratory

Room 532, Lujiaxi Building, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China

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Huimin Zhang & Xiyuan Yu's paper has been accepted by Anal. Chem.

2021-04-19 17:57:00

Isolation and genetic analysis of circulating fetal cells from billions of maternal cells in peripheral blood is the cornerstone of fetal cell-based non-invasive prenatal diagnosis. Inspired by hierarchically multivalent architecture for enhanced capture of nature, an aptamer-based Hierarchically mUltivalent aNTibody mimic intERface (HUNTER) was designed with tremendous avidity effect for highly efficient capture and non-destructive release of fetal cells. It was engineered by grafting Y-shaped DNA nanostructures to a linear polymer chain, creating a flexible polymer chain with bivalent aptamer side chains. This hierarchical arrangement of aptamer ensures morphological complementarity, collective multiple-site interaction, and multivalent recognition between aptamer and target cells. In combination with a deterministic lateral displacement (DLD)-patterned microdevice named as HUNTER-Chip, it achieves a binding affinity over 65-fold and capture efficiency over 260%-fold due to the combination of hierarchically designed aptamers and frequent cell-ligands collision created by DLD. Moreover, nuclease-assisted cell release strategy facilitates the release of fetal cells for gene analysis, such as fluorescence in-situ hybridization (FISH). With the advantages of high affinity, excellent capture efficiency, and compatible downstream analysis, HUNTER-Chip holds great potential for non-invasive prenatal diagnosis.