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Updated: Aug 23, 2025
In Vitro Selection of Aptamers to Differentiate Infectious from Non-Infectious Viruses
Published on: September 7, 2022
DNA aptamers selection for Staphylococcus aureus cells by SELEX and Cell-SELEX
Mariane Izabella Abreu de Melo1, Pricila da Silva Cunha2,3, Iêda Mendes Ferreira2
1Centro de Desenvolvimento da Tecnologia Nuclear, CDTN, 31270-901, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil. mariane.melo@cdtn.br.
Background:
Staphylococcus aureus is the most common bacteria found in skin, soft tissues, bone, and bone prostheses infections. The aim of this study was to select DNA aptamers for S. aureus to be applied in the diagnosis of bacteria.
Methods And Results:
We used SELEX (Systematic Evolution of Ligands by EXponencial Enrichment) for peptidoglycan followed by cell-SELEX with S. aureus cells as target. Four sequences showed significantly higher binding to S. aureus distinguishing it from the control cells of other significant microbial species: Escherichia coli, Candida albicans, Streptococcus pyogenes and Streptococcus pneumoniae. In particular, ApSA1 (Kd = 62.7 ± 5.6 nM) and ApSA3 (Kd = 43.3 ± 3.0 nM) sequences combined high affinity and specificity for S. aureus, considering all microorganisms tested.
Conclusions:
Our results demonstrated that these aptamers were able to identify peptidoglycan in the S. aureus surface and have great potential for use in the development of radiopharmaceuticals capable to identify S. aureus infectious foci, as well as in other aptamer-based methodologies for bacteria diagnosis.
