An Elegant Biosensor Molecular Beacon Probe: Challenges and Recent Solutions
Figure 7
Schemes and energy diagrams for hybridization probes. (a) Hybridization of a linear oligonucleotide probe. “DS” and “AS” stand for probe-analyte-dissociated and -associated states, respectively. The difference in the energy between matched and mismatched duplexes is much smaller than the energy gap between DS and AS. (b) Hybridization of the MB probe. The energy of DS is reduced due to the formation of a 4–7-nucleotide stem. The maximum on the energy curve corresponds to the DS of the MB probe with unwound stem. (c) Dumbbell MB probe contains two stem loop elements in its structure. (d) Triple-stem probe has three stem structures. (e) Hybridization of MB-based X sensor. X sensor of Figure 6 was equipped with an additional stem-loop in the analyte-binding arm of strand. strand binds the analyte within an SNP site.
