Nucleic acid aptamer-based methods for diagnosis of infections

Abstract

Infectious diseases are a serious global problem, which not only take an enormous human toll but also incur tremendous economic losses. In combating infectious diseases, rapid and accurate diagnostic tests are required for pathogen identification at the point of care (POC). In this review, investigations of diagnostic strategies for infectious diseases that are based on aptamers, especially nucleic acid aptamers, oligonucleotides that have high affinities and specificities toward their targets, are described. Owing to their unique features including low cost of production, easy chemical modification, high chemical stability, reproducibility, and low levels of immunogenicity and toxicity, aptamers have been widely utilized as bio-recognition elements (bio-receptors) for the development of infection diagnostic systems. We discuss nucleic acid aptamer-based methods that have been developed for diagnosis of infections using a format that organizes discussion according to the target pathogenic analytes including toxins or proteins, whole cells and nucleic acids. Also included is, a summary of recent advances made in the sensitive detection of pathogenic bacteria utilizing the isothermal nucleic acid amplification method. Lastly, a nucleic acid aptamer-based POC system is described and future directions of studies in this area are discussed.

Application of aptamers for in vivo molecular imaging and theranostics

“…This is partially because most aptamers are currently selected against cancer biomarkers. However, the scope of application should extend to other diseases, such as neurodegenerative and infectious diseases, as the number of aptamers identified each year increases [83,84].…”

Binding of Short Dna Oligonucleides to the Surface of Reduced Graphene Oxide to Create Biological Sensors

“…Moreover, we immobilized short DNA oliguncleotides (aptamers) to reduced graphene oxide film through a modified EDC/HNS reaction. Aptamers as biosensitive agents have such advantages over antibodies as higher stability, much simpler and cheaper synthesis [10][11][12][13][14]. As a final point we demonstrated selective response of sensors structures based on reduced graphene oxide with the binded aptamers to the target and reference proteins.…”

Immunomagnetic separation: An effective pretreatment technology for isolation and enrichment in food microorganisms detection

“…Compared with antibody, aptamers are less labor‐intensive and more easily labeled with enzymes, biotin, fluorescent dyes, and DNA ligands. Besides, the function of immobilized aptamers can be easily regenerated and aptamers can be reused (Park, 2018). It has been reported that biosensors based on aptamers possess outstanding features, such as high affinity, selectivity, stability, and productivity (Verdian, 2017).…”