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Nucleic acid aptamers as aptasensors for plant biology
Summary
Researchers reviewed how DNA aptamers — short synthetic molecules that bind tightly to specific targets, similar to how antibodies work — could be used as biosensors to detect and measure plant hormones with greater precision than current lab methods. This emerging tool could give scientists the ability to track hormone signals inside and between plant cells in real time.
Our knowledge of cell- and tissue-specific quantification of phytohormones is heavily reliant on laborious mass spectrometry techniques. Genetically encoded biosensors have allowed spatial and some temporal quantification of phytohormones intracellularly, but there is still limited information on their intercellular distributions. Here, we review nucleic acid aptamers as an emerging biosensing platform for the detection and quantification of analytes with high affinity and specificity. Options for DNA aptamer technology are explained through selection, sequencing analysis and techniques for evaluating affinity and specificity, and we focus on previously developed DNA aptamers against various plant analytes. We suggest how these tools might be applied in planta for quantification of molecules of interest both intracellularly and intercellularly.
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