aptamer
English edit
Etymology edit
From Latin aptus (“apt, proper”) + -mer (from Ancient Greek μέρος (méros, “part, portion”); compare mero-).
Noun edit
aptamer (plural aptamers)
- (biochemistry, genetics) Any subsequence of nucleic acid or protein, selected from a large random sequence-pool, used to bind to a specific target molecule.
- 2005, (US) National Research Council, Sensor Systems for Biological Agent Attacks[1], page 117:
- Aptamers are oligomers of RNA or DNA that spontaneously fold into specific three-dimensional shapes that can bind defined targets. The specificity of the shape of the binding site arises from the base sequence of the aptamer, which determines the base-pairing pattern of the oligomer.
- 2009, Corinne Ravelet, Eric Peyrin, Chapter 10: Aptamers in Affinity Separations: Stationary Separation, Yingfu Li, Yi Lu (editors), Functional Nucleic Acids for Analytical Applications, page 271,
- The use of DNA or RNA aptamers as tools in analytical chemistry is a very promising field of research because of their capabilities to bind specifically the target molecules with an affinity similar to that of antibodies.
- 2010, Dabid Loakes, “Nucleotides an Nucleic Acids; Oligo- and Polynucleotides”, in D. W. Allen, J. C. Tebby, John C. Tebby, David Loakes, editors, Organophosphorus Chemistry, page 144:
- The field of aptamer research is also more targeted, with many more catalytic aptamers being examined rather than for binding alone.
- 2015, Caroli J et al, "APTANI: a computational tool to select aptamers through sequence-structure motif analysis of HT-SELEX data", Bioinformatics, 32 (2): 161-164, "3 Results".
- To test APTANI performances and validate its findings, we analyzed a sequence library corresponding to an HT-SELEX experiment designed to isolate aptamers specific for murine IL4Ra (Roth et al., 2012).
Translations edit
any subsequence of nucleic acid or protein used to bind to a specific target molecule