An AIEgen/graphene oxide nanocomposite (AIEgen@GO)-based two-stage "turn-on" nucleic acid biosensor for rapid detection of SARS-CoV-2 viral sequence

The ongoing outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has posed significant challenges in early viral diagnosis. Hence, it is urgently desirable to develop a rapid, inexpensive, and sensitive method to aid point-of-care SARS-CoV-2 detection. In this work, we report a highly sequence-specific biosensor based on nanocomposites with aggregation-induced emission luminogens (AIEgen)-labeled oligonucleotide probes on graphene oxide nanosheets (AIEgen@GO) for one step-detection of SARS-CoV-2-specific nucleic acid sequences (Orf1ab or N genes). A dual "turn-on" mechanism based on AIEgen@GO was established for viral nucleic acids detection. Here, the first-stage fluorescence recovery was due to dissociation of the AIEgen from GO surface in the presence of target viral nucleic acid, and the second-stage enhancement of AIE-based fluorescent signal was due to the formation of a nucleic acid duplex to restrict the intramolecular rotation of the AIEgen. Furthermore, the feasibility of our platform for diagnostic application was demonstrated by detecting SARS-CoV-2 virus plasmids containing both Orf1ab and N genes with rapid detection around 1 h and good sensitivity at pM level without amplification. Our platform shows great promise in assisting the initial rapid detection of the SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid sequence before utilizing quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction for second confirmation.