Team:Washington/Aptamer

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Aptamer Background

For commercial shellfish farmers and recreational hunters alike, marine biotoxins pose a significant threat to health and welfare. With this project, we aim to create an inexpensive and easy-to-use test kit for the detection of the shellfish toxin okadaic acid using engineered yeast strains and DNA aptamers on a paper device. We also hope that this project paves the way for a new class of biosensors capable of detecting a wide range of small molecules.

An aptamer is a single strand of RNA which folds into a structure that is able to bind to a variety of small molecules and proteins. Theophylline is commonly used target molecule for academic studies on aptamers due to its ability to permeate membranes.

Ribozymes are self-cleaving pieces of RNA. This can be utilized to destabilize RNA transcripts.

Aptazymes are a combination of both aptamers and ribozymes. This allows for the selectivity of aptamers which in turn results in the activity of the ribozyme section of the RNA. Overall this is a reactive strand of RNA with selectivity. Additionally, this can control protein expression at the level of translation. This allows for quicker response times. RNA allows for easy tenability so that the general system can be modified to fit several contexts. In this project, we use theophiline as a model small molecule due to its ability to permeate through membranes.

Design