Advances in pathogen-associated molecules detection using Aptamer based biosensors

Pathogens are all around us in the environment and although advances in medical science have been made to protect against infection by pathogens, through the use of antibiotics, vaccination and fungicide, yet pathogens continue to threaten human life. The fast pathogen detection still remains an unresolved issue since conventional identification and detection methods are complex, costly and require minimum two to three days for detection. Thus there is an urgent need for the development of robust, sensitive and portable diagnostic tools that can lead to accurate and rapid detection of a variety of pathogens. Aptamers are small DNA and RNA oligonucleotides that can bind with high affinity and selectivity to a large number of targets like small and macromolecules from organic, inorganic and biological origin. Aptasensors are biosensors where aptamers are used in place of biological ligands to sense targeted analytes. Oligonucleotide-(both DNA, RNA), peptide- and peptidenucleic acid (PNA)-based aptasensors offer high reproducibility against a wide variety of targets (proteins, peptides, drugs, metabolites, metal ions, cells etc.) and are emerging as the most suitable candidates for analytical methods that use a very small amount (nano to microlitre) of analytes. Herein, the recent developments of aptasensors for the detection of pathogens have been discussed briefly.