A dumbbell molecular beacon for the specific recognition of nucleic acids.

A dumbbell molecular beacon (DMB) was designed and synthesized with the attachment of a fluorophore and a quencher at two ends. This DMB probe can be used to detect single mismatch of a 20mer oligodeoxynucleotide in two different buffers and discrimination factors were as high as 60 at 37°C. Statistics of single substitutions of analytes showed that both substituted positions and substituted nucleotides have important contributions for this probe to efficiently distinguish the true analyte from mismatched ones. Hybridization kinetics of DMB with the target oligonucleotide was also studied.