(Invited) Functional Nucleic Acids as Bacterial and Viral Sensors

Abstract

Rapid detection of infectious pathogens is vital for preventing costless outbreaks and improving human health. Current detection methods oftentimes lack the means to detect infectious pathogens in a simple, rapid, and reliable manner at the time and point of need. Functional nucleic acids (FNAs) – specifically DNA aptamers and DNAzymes – have the potential to overcome these limitations by acting as key components for point-of-care (POC) biosensors due to their distinctive advantages that include high binding affinities and specificities, excellent chemical stability, ease of synthesis and modification, and compatibility with a variety of signal-amplification and signal-transduction mechanisms. In this presentation, I will discuss the work completed in my laboratory, in collaboration with several other groups at McMaster, towards developing simple-to-use analytical devices with integrated FNAs to detect bacterial and viral pathogens, such as E. coli, Salmonella, SARS-CoV-2, porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV), directly in water, food or clinical samples.