Real milk sample assisted selection of specific aptamer towards sarafloxacin and its application in establishment of an effective aptasensor

The aptamers screened by the classic SELEX strategy or other approaches do not undergo the real sample analysis during the selection process, and the environmental inconsistency between the selection and final detection systems might influence the aptamer characteristics and detection performance. Herein, a novel real sample assisted SELEX selection strategy has been proposed to rationally select the suitable aptamers with high detection performance, using the selection of a sarafloxacin (SAR) specific aptamer as an example. Based on the developed strategy, the aptamer Apt-F2 with higher specificity and SAR binding affinity was obtained as compared to the aptamer Apt-B4 selected by the standard SELEX strategy. Apt-F2 also exhibited a stronger conformational change after binding as compared to Apt-B4. Apt-B4 and Apt-F2 were used as a platform for developing the fluorescent aptasensor. Under optimized conditions, the limit of detection of Apt-B4- and Apt-F2-based aptasensors for SAR was 0.19 and 0.12 ng/mL respectively. Moreover, Apt-F2-based aptasensor also revealed a slightly superior SAR recovery rate from the spiked milk samples. The findings obtained in the study confirmed the advantage of the real SELEX strategy as compared to the traditional version. Further, the characteristics of the aptasensor proposed here also revealed its application potential for detecting SAR in the real milk or other animal-sourced food samples.

Automated summary

A novel real sample assisted SELEX selection strategy was proposed to select aptamers with high detection performance, using SAR specific aptamer Apt-F2 as an example, which showed higher specificity and SAR binding affinity compared to Apt-B4 selected by standard SELEX. The aptasensors developed based on Apt-F2 demonstrated potential for detecting SAR in real milk or other animal-sourced food samples, with slightly superior detection limits and recovery rates compared to those based on Apt-B4.