Focus on In Silico Aptamer Synthesis New Food for Thought

Abstract

The use of aptamers (short single strands of DNA or RNA) in therapy, diagnosis and early detection of illness is a challenging field of research. Aptamers are artificially produced, tailored to best fit a specific target, and are a competitive alternative to antibodies. The in vivo procedures to synthetize aptamers are in continuous development, enlarging the scenario of the possible targets and improving the effectiveness of the products. However, as of today, these methods are still quite time consuming and expensive to allow mass production. On the other side, guessing the 3D structure of macromolecules is the task of several computational procedures, which have, over time, refined their predictive power and that can be used to look for the complexes with the highest stability. In the near future, hopefully, the joint use of in vitro and in silico techniques will accelerate and ameliorate the selection procedure. At the moment nor the in vitro neither the insilico procedures are flawless.