Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 9, 2026
11:14
Primer-Free Aptamer Selection Using A Random DNA Library
Published on: July 26, 2010
24.8K
Unexpected enrichment of DNA aptamers for Zn2+ ions from an insulin selection
Yibo Liu1,2, Xiaoqin Wang1, Juewen Liu1,2
1Department of Chemistry, Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada. liujw@uwaterloo.ca.
Chemical Communications (Cambridge, England)
|May 29, 2024
Abstract:
We serendipitously discovered Zn2+-binding DNA aptamers when selecting insulin aptamers. The Zn-1 aptamer binds to Zn2+ with a dissociation constant (Kd) of ∼1 μM, and has 450-fold higher selectivity for Zn2+ over Cd2+. A strand-displacement based fluorescent sensor achieved a limit of detection of 0.2 μM Zn2+.
