Allosteric aptamers and aptazymes as probes for screening approaches

Substantial effort is currently being devoted to engineering allosteric nucleic acids, aptamers and ribozymes for various applications in cellular and molecular biology, biotechnology and diagnostics. These molecular switches alter their different functional activities in response to specific binding molecules, including proteins, nucleic acids and small organic compounds. The interacting molecules trigger a response in the allosteric nucleic acid, which can be used for purposes such as real-time monitoring, high-throughput screening or gene expression control.