Quartz Crystal Microbalance Studies on Surface-Initiated DNA Hybridization Chain Reaction

The hybridization chain reaction (HCR), a type of nucleic acid amplification method, was studied by a quartz crystal resonator technique. We probed the properties of the boundary DNA layer with a thickness of the viscous penetration depth at the crystal-solution interface. According to the relationship between the change of resonant frequency and the mass adsorbed on the crystal surface, the kinetics of surface-initiated HCR was measured, as well as the viscosity and the shear modulus of H1/H2 solution with different concentrations near a solid substrate. This work provides a new method for studying nucleic acid reactions at solid surface and mechanistic insight for HCR-based amplification and biodetection.