SELEX—A (r)evolutionary method to generate high-affinity nucleic acid ligands

More DNA–Aptamers for Small Drugs: A Capture–SELEX Coupled with Surface Plasmon Resonance and High-Throughput Sequencing

“…SELEX progression has to be evaluated at each cycle, and it is usually performed by quantifying the radioactive/fluorescent oligonucleotides eluted (depending on the SELEX type this would be used to infer the discarded or selected oligonucleotides), 27 or as recently proposed by evaluating the library complexity through melting curve analysis. 33 Although important, the above-mentioned methods extrapolate the selection for target-specific oligonucleotides from indirect events like library complexity or increased elution, which could be severely impacted by unforeseen biases common in SELEX protocols.…”

Synthetic RNA devices to expedite the evolution of metabolite-producing microbes

“…In recent decades, an expanding number of riboswitch classes, even those with specificity for the fluoride anion, have been discovered from natural sources 19,37 . This indicates that there is a strong possibility of generating synthetic aptamers that selectively bind to numerous chemicals by systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment in which we are interested 13 . Then, synthetic riboselectors based on these in vitro-selected aptamers can be easily constructed by applying any of several highthroughput screening methods as shown in this study [14][15][16] .…”

“…Among such RNA segments, riboswitches-noncoding cis-regulatory elements found in the 5 0 -untranslated regions of mRNAs-typically sense intracellular metabolites through aptamer domains, which bind these metabolites and undergo a metabolite-induced conformational change that converts the metabolic signal into a change in the expression of downstream genes 12 . RNA aptamers that bind to target molecules with high selectivity and sensitivity can be readily selected in vitro through systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment 13 . Synthetic riboswitches that actually work in vivo can be generated from these in vitro-selected aptamers and can also be functionally manipulated using various high-throughput screening methods [14][15][16] .…”

First report of the use of a saxitoxin–protein conjugate to develop a DNA aptamer to a small molecule toxin

“…Since their discovery, aptamers have been applied to different classes of targets: small molecules (including organic dyes, metals, drugs, carbohydrates, amino acids, nucleotides, and peptides), proteins (including enzymes, antibodies, gene regulatory factors, and lectins), as well as viruses and pathogenic bacteria (see reviews by Jayasena, 1999;Stoltenburg et al, 2007). Regardless of the class and size of the desired target, there are a number of molecular features that determine the ease with which aptamers with high specificity can be generated.…”