National Invention Patent: An Electrochemical DNABiosensor for Rapid Detection of eDNA in Crown-of-thorns Starfish
Recently, the national invention patent: an electrochemical DNA sensor for rapid detection of environmental DNA of the crown-of-thorns starfish (Patent No. 202111637977.0), which was applied for by Associate Professor Liwei Wang and others in our institute, has been authorized.
Crown-of-thorns starfish is a natural enemy of corals, and its repeated outbreaks are the main cause of coral reef degradation in the Indo-Pacific region. For example, the decline of living coral cover on Australia's Great Barrier Reef between 1985 and 2012 was mainly caused by longspur starfish outbreaks (42% of the corals died from predation by crown-of-thorns starfish). Crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks can cause great damage to the physical and biological structure of coral reefs, severely weakening the ecological function of coral reef ecosystems.Traditional monitoring techniques cannot achieve large-scale and high-frequency monitoring and warning and cannot accurately recognize the early signals of crown-of-thorns starfish.
This invention patent reports a DNA electrochemical biosensor based on the assembly of MoO2/C NF with specific DNA probes, andapplied forthe field,real-timeanddynamic monitoring of eDNA in crown-of-thorns starfish. Thebiosensor hada low detection limit (LOD = 0.147 ng/μL) and exhibitedexcellent specificity and selectivity. The results of the sea trial showed that the sensor successfully detected the eDNA ofcrown-of-thornsstarfish, and its analytical results were highly consistent with the results of the underwater ecological survey, indicating that thebiosensor hadgood reliabilitywiththe value of identifying thecrown-of-thornsstarfish, which can meet the needs of the field monitoring of thecrown-of-thornsstarfishbefore the outbreak of the outbreak accurately. Therefore, this patent provides a new technology for reliable tracing ofcrown-of-thornsstarfish,as well as astrong technical support for realizing the early warning and biological control ofcrown-of-thornsstarfishon a regional scale,whichfills the gap in the international research on the detection ofcrown-of-thornsstarfishusing electrochemical sensors.
Meanwhile, the research paper corresponding to the patent of the invention was also published inthe top journal:Biosensors and Bioelectronics, 2023, 230, 115265. DOI: 10.1016/j.bios.2023.115265.
