Glycans - simple or complex carbohydrates - play key roles as recognition determinants and modulators of numerous physiological and pathological processes. Thus, many biotechnological, diagnostic and ...therapeutic opportunities abound for molecular recognition entities that can bind glycans with high selectivity and affinity. This review begins with an overview of the current biologically and synthetically derived glycan-binding scaffolds that include antibodies, lectins, aptamers and boronic acid-based entities. It is followed by a more detailed discussion on various aspects of their generation, structure and recognition properties. It serves as the basis for highlighting recent key developments and technical challenges that must be overcome in order to fully deal with the specific recognition of a highly diverse and complex range of glycan structures.
The synthesis of a novel modified nucleoside phosphoramidite, Acrylamide-dT-CE phosphoramidite, obtained in three steps from commercially available starting materials, is reported. It was readily ...incorporated into thrombin binding aptamer (
TBA
) sequences using automated solid-phase synthesis under ultra-mild conditions, with the modification shown not to adversely affect duplex stability, G-quadruplex structure, or thrombin binding. The reaction and integration of the modified strands with acrylamide polymers was evidenced by gel electrophoresis. The Acrylamide-dT functional handle promises to be an ideal synthon for preparing DNA-polymer hybrids for use in various macromolecular materials applications.
Nucleoside derivative Acrylamide-dT can be readily synthesised and incorporated multiple times into DNA sequences at any position
via
automated synthesis.
Virus recognition has been driven to the forefront of molecular recognition research due to the COVID‐19 pandemic. Development of highly sensitive recognition elements, both natural and synthetic is ...critical to facing such a global issue. However, as viruses mutate, it is possible for their recognition to wane through changes in the target substrate, which can lead to detection avoidance and increased false negatives. Likewise, the ability to detect specific variants is of great interest for clinical analysis of all viruses. Here, a hybrid aptamer‐molecularly imprinted polymer (aptaMIP), that maintains selective recognition for the spike protein template across various mutations, while improving performance over individual aptamer or MIP components (which themselves demonstrate excellent performance). The aptaMIP exhibits an equilibrium dissociation constant of 1.61 nM toward its template which matches or exceeds published examples of imprinting of the spike protein. The work here demonstrates that “fixing” the aptamer within a polymeric scaffold increases its capability to selectivity recognize its original target and points toward a methodology that will allow variant selective molecular recognition with exceptional affinity.
A new aptamer specific for wild‐type SARS‐CoV‐2 spike protein is developed and incorporated into a molecularly‐imprinted polymer (MIP) nanoparticle. This hybrid outperforms both individual components (aptamer and MIP) with an equilibrium binding constant below that of the SARS‐CoV‐2 spike—ACE2 receptor interaction; and with clearly superior variant selectivity suggesting a new way to rapidly develop variant selective recognition nanomaterials.
The dynamic nature of micellar nanostructures is employed to form a self-assembled Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) nanoplatform for enhanced sensing of DNA. The platform consists of lipid ...oligonucleotide FRET probes incorporated into micellar scaffolds, where single recognition events result in fusion and fission of DNA mixed micelles, triggering the fluorescence response of multiple rather than a single FRET pair. In comparison to conventional FRET substrates where a single donor interacts with a single acceptor, the micellar multiplex FRET system showed ∼20- and ∼3-fold enhancements in the limit of detection and FRET efficiency, respectively. This supramolecular signal amplification approach could potentially be used to improve FRET-based diagnostic assays of nucleic acid and non-DNA based targets.
The dynamic nature of micellar nanostructures is employed to form a self-assembled Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) nanoplatform for enhanced sensing of DNA. The platform consists of lipid ...oligonucleotide FRET probes incorporated into micellar scaffolds, where single recognition events result in fusion and fission of DNA mixed micelles, triggering the fluorescence response of multiple rather than a single FRET pair. In comparison to conventional FRET substrates where a single donor interacts with a single acceptor, the micellar multiplex FRET system showed ∼20- and ∼3-fold enhancements in the limit of detection and FRET efficiency, respectively. This supramolecular signal amplification approach could potentially be used to improve FRET-based diagnostic assays of nucleic acid and non-DNA based targets.
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