| Scope and method of study. Yersinia pestis is a CDC 'category A' bioterrorism agent. This study attempts to select an aptamer to detect the presence of LOS and F1 antigen on Y. pestis . Aptamer selection by Systematic Evolution of Ligand by Exponential Enrichment is an iterative process of binding, partitioning, amplification and strand separation.; Findings and conclusions. The Lipid A as well as the core polysaccharide of LOS was found unfavorable for aptamer binding. Purified F1 antigen was considered a suitable target for aptamer selection. Our partitioning method using electrodialysis and eight rounds of selection resulted in thirty nine clones from Round 8 with a consensus motif --GTGAG---GTTG--. However, binding assays were unsuccessful due to non-specificity of Round 8 to F1 antigen, and hence additional four rounds of SELEX are being carried out. The aptamer thus selected might be used in in vitro diagnostic assays to detect F1 antigen of Yersinia pestis. |
