Aptamers in Education: Undergraduates Make Aptamers and Acquire 21st Century Skills Along the Way.

Gwendolyn M Stovall,Andrew D Ellington,Shelly Engelman,Vincent Huynh

doi:10.3390/s19153270

Gwendolyn M Stovall, Andrew D Ellington + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/s19153270

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Abstract

Aptamers have a well-earned place in therapeutic, diagnostic, and sensor applications, and we now show that they provide an excellent foundation for education, as well. Within the context of the Freshman Research Initiative (FRI) at The University of Texas at Austin, students have used aptamer selection and development technologies in a teaching laboratory to build technical and 21st century skills appropriate for research scientists. One of the unique aspects of this course-based undergraduate research experience is that students develop and execute their own projects, taking ownership of their experience in what would otherwise be a traditional teaching lab setting. Of the many successes, this work includes the isolation and characterization of novel calf intestinal alkaline phosphatase (anti-CIAP) RNA aptamers by an undergraduate researcher. Further, preliminary survey data suggest that students who participate in the aptamer research experience express significant gains in their self-efficacy to conduct research, and their perceived ability to communicate scientific results, as well as organize and interpret data. This work describes, for the first time, the use of aptamers in an educational setting, highlights the positive student outcomes of the aptamer research experience, and presents the research findings relative to the novel anti-CIAP aptamer.

Highlights

With a 29-year history, aptamers have a well-established presence in diagnostic, therapeutics, and sensor technologies [1,2,3]
Three additional rounds, nine rounds in all, of in vitro aptamer selections were performed with a decreased RNA:calf intestinal alkaline phosphatase (CIAP) incubation time and increased stringency, further challenging the CIAP-binders with increased washes and increased RNA pool: CIAP ratio
Assaying for binding specificity, the aptamer binding affinity against many CIAP-related proteins survey data collected in Fall

Summary

Introduction

With a 29-year history, aptamers have a well-established presence in diagnostic, therapeutics, and sensor technologies [1,2,3]. With time the range of aptamer applications has broadened, with some applications stretching the field in interesting ways, including their use as molecular recognition elements (e.g., ELISA/ELONA, [4]), imaging elements (e.g., within live cells, [5]), DNA origami and nanorobots [6], and aptamers have taken a foothold in education. Aptamer technological and scientific advancements have been adopted and adapted to long-term course-based undergraduate research experiences (CURE). Meeting the urgent call for authentic research experiences in education [7,8,9], CURES have emerged throughout STEM fields.

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