Evolution of Cell-Type-Specific RNA Aptamers via Live Cell-Based SELEX

Live cell-based SELEX (Systematic Evolution of Ligand EXponential enrichment) is a promising approach for identifying aptamers that can selectively bind to a cell-surface receptor or recognize a particular target cell population. In particular, it offers a facile selection strategy for some special cell-surface proteins that are originally glycosylated or heavily posttranslationally modified and are unavailable in their native/active conformation after in vitro expression and purification. In this chapter, we describe a generalized procedure for evolution of cell type-specific RNA aptamers targeting a cell membrane bound target by combining the live cell-based SELEX strategy with high-throughput sequencing (HTS) and bioinformatics analysis.