A Modified CE-SELEX Approach to Screen Aptamers for Small-Molecule Targets
*Corresponding Author: Bin Wang, Department of Chemistry, Marshall University, Huntington, WV, USA, Tel: (304) 696-3456, Email: wangb@marshall.eduReceived Date: Oct 13, 2020 / Accepted Date: Oct 27, 2020 / Published Date: Nov 03, 2020
Copyright: © 2020 Wang B This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Coupling capillary electrophoresis with traditional systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment (CE-SELEX) is an improved SELEX technique that emerged in the 2000s, and is mainly used to screen aptamers for large molecular targets such as proteins. For small molecular targets, CE-SELEX only allows partial isolation of target-bound aptamers from the unbound library due to non-observable mobility shifts induced by small-molecule targets. To address this issue, the author proposes a modified CE-SELEX approach that first splits a DNA/RNA library into two or three subgroups to reduce the size/molecular weight differences among sequences in the library. Each sub-library then interacts with the target molecule; the target-aptamer complexes are then collected using the procedure described by previous authors. The modified CE-SELEX method would allow the isolation of aptamers with high affinity and selectivity that are otherwise buried in the original unbound library peak, thus increasing the suitability of CE-SELEX for screening aptamers for small-molecule targets.
