1.Aptasensors in viral detection
Subash Chandra Bose Gopinath ; Thangavel Lakshmipriya ; Mohd Khairuddin Md Arshad ; Chun Hong Voon ; Uda Hashim
Malaysian Journal of Microbiology 2016;12(5):376-382
Background: Aptamers are single-stranded nucleic acids, so-called ‘artificial antibodies’, identified from the randomized
combinatorial library against the target by the process called ‘SELEX’ (Systematic Evolution of Ligands by EXponential
enrichment). Target can have any sizes from small molecules to the whole cell, attests the versatility of aptamers to bind
a wide range of targets. Aptamers have several advantages over antibodies, such as they are easy to prepare, cheaper,
have no batch variations, are easy to modify, stable and most importantly, non-immunogenic. Because of these positive
characteristics, aptamers are incorporated in different fields, and most attractive in the applications involving
therapeutics and diagnoses (theranostics). With either aptamers alone or complementing with antibodies, several high
sensitive, portable sensors have been demonstrated for use in ‘bedside analysis’. Moreover, aptamers are more
amenable to chemical modifications, making them capable of utilization with the most developed aptasensors (aptamerbased
sensors).
Significance: The development of more sensitive aptasensors could be useful and important for medical diagnosis,
identification of pathogens for the quality control of consumable items, and surveillance of emerging diseases. In fact,
aptasensors have already shown their efficacy in the detection of life threatening diseases caused by early stage of viral
infections. In this review, role of aptasensors in detecting pathogenic viruses are overviewed.
Keywords: Anti-virus; aptamer; aptasensor; bedside analysis; SELEX