Poster abstracts
Poster number 163 submitted by Adam Litterst
Creating Super-Aptamers with Modified Nucleobases for Biosensor
Adam Litterst (Department of Chemistry, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville), Sun Jeong Im (Department of Chemistry, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville), Mina Sumita (Department of Chemistry, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville)
Abstract:
Our main research interest is the development of a food safety biosensor that can detect foodborne pathogens by using DNA and RNA aptamers. These aptamers are evolved to have a high affinity and specificity to the target pathogen and are developed by a new SPR-SELEX, Surface Plasmon Resonance-Systematic Evolution of Ligands by Exponential enrichment, method. To do this, the aptamers were evolved to target Exchericha coli K12 and were tested for specificity with Bacillus subtilis. Using SPR-SELEX, we have developed a super aptamer that utilizes deoxyuridine, the DNA form of the RNA base uridine, along with the 3 other common dNTPs. Deoxyuridine was chosen to be used in this super aptamer for its role in structural conformations in RNA and is used in deoxy-form for its increased stability of DNA. The success of this project allows for more possibilities of super aptamers such as Pseudouridine in RNA aptamers.
Keywords: super-aptamers, E. coli, biosensor