Capillary electrophoresis as a tool for screening aptamer with high affinity and high specificity to ricin

Abstract

Aptamers which specifically recognize targets are selected from random oligonucleotide library using systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment (SELEX). In this paper, capillary electrophoresis (CE) as a separation approach has been introduced to SELEX procedure. The high efficiency of CE gives rise to greatly shorten the selection procedure. The results from enzyme-linked assay and dot blot experiment show that an enrichment pool has been obtained after four rounds selection, which can specifically recognize ricin.

Keywords

aptamer, systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment (SELEX), capillary electrophoresis (CE), single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) pool, ricin