Publications and Research
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-30-2017
Abstract
The demand has increased for sophisticated molecular tools with improved detection limits. Such molecules should be simple in structure, yet stable enough for clinical applications. Nucleic acid aptamers (NAAs) represent a class of molecules able to meet this demand. In particular, aptamers, a class of small nucleic acid ligands that are composed of single-stranded modified/unmodified RNA/DNA molecules, can be evolved from a complex library using Systematic Evolution of Ligands by EXponential enrichment (SELEX) against almost any molecule. Since its introduction in 1990, in stages, SELEX technology has itself undergone several modifications, improving selection and broadening the repertoire of targets. This review summarizes these milestones that have pushed the field forward, allowing researchers to generate aptamers that can potentially be applied as therapeutic and diagnostic agents.
Comments
This article originally appeared in Molecules, available at DOI: 10.3390/molecules22020215
© 2017 by the author. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).