Synthetic biology for the development of novel nucleic acid aptamers

Abstract

Nucleic acid aptamers are ligands that specifically bind to a target molecule, such as a wide variety of small molecules, proteins, viruses, and cells, obtained by an in vitro selection method using nucleic acid libraries with a random sequence. The potential of aptamers that bind to proteins and inhibit their activities has been realized in the form of aptamer-based diagnostic and pharmaceutical products. However, the limited 4-base components (A, G, C, and T/U) of nucleic acids restrict the further development of aptamers with increased functionality. To address this problem, researchers have been developing artificial, extra base pairs, unnatural base pairs, that work with the natural A-T and G-C base pairs in replication and transcription. Unnatural base pairs could expand the genetic alphabet and enable the site-specific incorporation of extra components into DNA and RNA. This report describes a novel RNA aptamer creation by using unnatural base pair systems.