Screening and Identification of Specific Aptamers for Shellfish Allergen Tropomyosin with Capillary Electrophoresis-SELEX

Tropomyosin (TM), known as the major allergen in shellfish, has gained increasing concerns in industrialized countries, resulting in an urgent need for an accurate, simple, and sensitive method for TM detection in food products. Nucleic acid aptamers, short single-stranded oligonucleotides chains, can bind to various targets with a high affinity and specificity and hence have the potential to be used for the accurate detection of targets. Here, we proposed capillary electrophoresis-systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment (CE-SELEX) for rapid selection and identification of specific aptamers against shellfish TM. A selected aptamer IX exhibited high specificity and high binding affinity against TM with K-d determined (0.95 nM). In addition, the aptamer IX has great potential to be employed in the establishment of various aptasensors for TM detection in shellfish products. Furthermore, the CE-SELEX method may provide a universal and convenient method for the aptamer selection against more targets.