Aptamer-Based Sensors

Dear Colleagues,

Antibodies have been the traditional sensing platform underlying sensor design for the detection of biomedically and environmentally important “analytes”. However, in recent years, “aptamers”—DNA and RNA molecules with antibody-like properties of high-affinity and -specificity binding to analytes of interest—have started to assert themselves in the latest generations of sensors. In a number of ways, aptamers make excellent substitutes for antibodies: they are chemically stable, easily and inexpensively synthesized, and do not elicit a significant immune response if used in vivo. However, the isolation of a high-quality aptamer against a designated analyte does not in itself guarantee its usefulness as a biosensor; there is also the necessity for an effective transduction mechanism, such that analyte binding generates a quantifiable output (often optical or electronic) signal. This special issue of Sensors focuses on the variety of elegant approaches that have recently been taken to generate aptamer-based sensors—a new paradigm in analyte detection.

Prof. Dr. Dipankar Sen
Guest Editor