Application of capillary electrophoresis to the development and evaluation of aptamer affinity probes

Abstract

Nucleic acid aptamers can exhibit high binding affinities for a wide variety of targets and have received much attention as molecular recognition elements for enhanced biosensor performance. These aptamers recognize target molecules through a combination of conformational dependent non-covalent interactions in aqueous media which can be investigated using capillary electrophoresis-based methods. In this paper we report on the results of our studies of the relative binding affinity of <i>Campylobacter jejuni </i>aptamers using a capillary electrophoretic immunoassay. Our results show preferential binding to <i>C. jejuni</i> over other common food pathogen bacteria. Capillary electrophoresis can also be used to develop new aptamer recognition elements using an in vitro selection process known as systematic evolution of ligand by exponential enrichment (SELEX). Recently, this process has been adapted to use capillary electrophoresis in an attempt to shorten the overall selection process. This smart selection of nucleic acid aptamers from a large diversity of a combinatorial DNA library is under optimization for the development of aptamers which bind to Army-relevant targets. This paper will include a discussion of the establishment of CE-SELEX methods for the future development of smart aptamer probes.