Monoclonal Surface Display SELEX for Simple, Rapid, Efficient, and Cost-Effective Aptamer Enrichment and Identification

A novel method, monoclonal surface display SELEX (MSD-SELEX), has been designed for simple, rapid, efficient, and cost-effective enrichment and identification of aptamers from a library of monoclonal DNA-displaying beads produced via highly parallel single-molecule emulsion PCR. The approach was successfully applied for the identification of high-affinity aptamers that bind specifically to different types of targets, including cancer biomarker protein EpCAM and small toxin molecule aflatoxin B1. Compared to the conventional sequencing-chemical synthesis-screening work flow, MSD-SELEX avoids large-scale DNA sequencing, expensive and time-consuming DNA synthesis, and labor-intensive screening of large populations of candidates, thus offering a new approach for simple, rapid, efficient, and cost-effective aptamer identification for a wide variety of applications.