Feng Qu
Beijing Institute of Technology, China
Title: Aptamers selection methodology and strategy based on multiple modes capillary electrophoresis
Biography
Biography: Feng Qu
Abstract
Nucleic acid aptamers are short, single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) or RNA molecules that are selected for binding to a specific target. Aptamers can be used as recognition probes in biomedical, food and environment analysis. Moreover, they have great potential in disease diagnosis and treatment, drug discovery, medicine research, as well as bioimaging, which are expected to bring huge economic benefits. However, current aptamers application are far from satisfactory, and have not yet been fully developed. The complicated selection process with high cost and low efficiency is one of the bottlenecks of their application. There is still not universally accepted standard selection methods are accepted.
Capillary electrophoresis (CE) is one of the most powerful methods for aptamers sieving (known as CE-SELEX), which has the advantages of fast, high resolution, low sample consumption and smart separation modes of capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE), affinity capillary electrophoresis (ACE) and capillary isoelectric focus (CIEF). Moreover, the binding of target and synthetic single stranded DNA (ss-DNA) occurs in free solution, which eliminates the biases caused by stationary support and linker. Some important protein aptamers have been successfully obtained based on CE, which greatly improves the selection efficiency.