Synthesis and Characterization of Ribonucleic Acid Aptamers Targeted at Aspergillus Fungus Cell Surface Carbohydrates

Abstract

Aspergillosis is a disease characterized by the degradation of the respiratory system due to Aspergillus fumigatus fungal hyphae. The slow establishment of the infection yields low rates of detection and high mortality rates in immune‐suppressed patients in Intensive Care Units (ICU) and Internal Medical Wards (IMW). RNA aptamers may can aid in the detection of aspergillosis using the cell surface carbohydrate, beta‐D‐glucan. The aptamers would be selected to bind selectively to cell surface carbohydrates of the fungus, where positive signals would be useful in the identification of infection. This work will describe isolation of RNA aptamers from a randomized sequence population of 1020 to 1024 variants. RNA aptamer pools were synthesized using PCR amplification reactions to combine the DNA template with primers. In vitro transcription was conducted to form the RNA molecules, where selection was conducted in rounds against beta‐D‐glucan. Sequencing and binding assays will be used to characterize the RNA aptamer pool.