In vitro selection from combinatorial nucleic acid libraries

Since the early 1990s, combinatorial deoxyribonucleic acid and ribonucleic acid libraries have been used to isolate specific ligands for a variety of target molecules, as well as nucleic acid-based catalysts for different reactions. These iterative procedures are based on the fact that nucleic acids can be enzymatically amplified. In this chapter, we describe the synthesis of such combinatorial libraries, their analysis, and basic procedures of in vitro selection.