Rolling circle amplification (RCA) is an isothermal enzymatic process where a short DNA or RNA primer is amplified to form a long single stranded DNA or RNA using a circular DNA template and special DNA or RNA polymerases. The RCA product is a concatemer containing tens to hundreds of tandem repeats that are complementary to the circular template. The power, simplicity, and versatility of the DNA amplification technique have made it an attractive tool for biomedical research and nanobiotechnology. Traditionally, RCA has been used to develop sensitive diagnostic methods for a variety of targets including nucleic acids (DNA, RNA), small molecules, proteins, and cells. RCA has also attracted significant attention in the field of nanotechnology and nanobiotechnology. The RCA-produced long, single-stranded DNA with repeating units has been used as template for the periodic assembly of nanospecies. Moreover, since RCA products can be tailor-designed by manipulating the circular template, RCA has been employed to generate complex DNA nanostructures such as DNA origami, nanotubes, nanoribbons and DNA based metamaterials. These functional RCA based nanotechnologies have been utilized for biodetection, drug delivery, designing bioelectronic circuits and bioseparation. In this review, we introduce the fundamental engineering principles used to design RCA nanotechnologies, discuss recently developed RCA-based diagnostics and bioanalytical tools, and summarize the use of RCA to construct multivalent molecular scaffolds and nanostructures for applications in biology, diagnostics and therapeutics.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 29. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 10 September 2026.
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#1,678,758
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#106
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#14,654
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#1
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Altmetric has tracked 34,295,391 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 95th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 5,430 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 7.0. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 41 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 95% of its contemporaries.
