Applications and Prospects of Oligonucleotide Aptamers in Mass Spectrometry

Oligonucleotide aptamers are an important kind of chemical antibody-like functional biomolecules. The aptamer-based mass spectrometric techniques can not only provide molecular mass and characteristic structures by mass spectrometry, but show high sensitivity and high affinity enrichment towards target molecules by aptamers. This review summarized the advances in the aptamer-based mass spectrometric applications , highlighted the progress of aptamer-target interaction characterization , as well as the applications of aptamer as off-line or on-line affinity materials in mass spectrometric techniques. It suggested that the combination of various new mass spectrometric techniques , the construction or combination of varied pretreatment or on-line signal amplification approaches , especially the applications of aptameric functional nanomaterials , should be focused in the aspects of interaction characterization, selective extraction and highly sensitive detection of trace target molecules. The future prospects of the development were also described.