(606d) Aptamer Engineering for Ultrasensitive Detection of Pandemic Viruses and Emerging Contaminants

School of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Korea University, Anam-dong, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul 136-713, Republic of Korea.  +equally contributed.

*corresponding author: mbgu@korea.ac.kr

Aptamers are single-stranded nucleic acids having molecular recognition properties similar to antibodies, and isolated by in vitro selection and amplification process, SELEX.  Aptamer engineering includes innovative screening and modification of aptamers mazimizing their function.  This talk will start with how the aptamers are innovatively screened, for the first time in world, by using new nano-material, graphene, without immobilization of targets.  A couple of successful examples for protein and pandemic virus using immobilization-free screening of aptamers will be presented (1).  Once the aptamers are successfully screened out, the aptamers can be further processed, so called truncation.  In this talk, it will be presented how the aptamer candidates are analyzed and heuristically engineered for maximizing its function.  This sequence-based engineering of aptamers has resulted in very successful ultrasensitive biosensing, especially for the detection of pandemic virus and antibiotics, which can never been able to be reached without engineering of aptamers. Five different aptamers screened in our lab for small toxic molecules such as oxytetracyclin, tetracyclin, ibuprofen, diclofenac, beta-estradiol were used in this study (2).   In addition, the benefits of using nano-sized materials for biosensing will be presented with scientifically clear examples of different hybrid forms of nanomaterials and aptamers, such as aptamers-gold nanoparticle composites.  (1) ChemComm (2012), (2) Biosen. Bioel. (2010, 2011).