Plug-and-play protein biosensors using aptamer-regulated in vitro transcription

Published

September 12, 2024

Author(s)

Heonjoon Lee, Tian Xie, Byunghwa Kang, Xinjie Yu, Samuel Schaffter, Rebecca Schulman

Abstract

Molecular biosensors that accurately measure protein concentrations without external equipment are critical for solving numerous problems in diagnostics and therapeutics. Modularly transducing the binding of protein antibodies, protein switches or aptamers into a useful output remains challenging. Here, we develop a biosensing platform based on aptamer-regulated transcription in which aptamers integrated into transcription templates serve as inputs to molecular circuits that can be programmed to a produce a variety of responses. We modularly design molecular biosensors using this platform by swapping aptamer domains for specific proteins and downstream domains that encode different RNA transcripts. By coupling aptamer-regulated transcription with diverse transduction circuits, we rapidly construct analog protein biosensors and digital protein biosensors with detection ranges that can be tuned over two orders of magnitude andcan exceedthe binding affinity of the aptamer. Aptamer-regulated transcription is a straightforward and inexpensive approach for constructing programmable protein biosensors that could have diverse applications in research and biotechnology.

Citation

Nature Communications

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-51907-4

Local Download

Keywords

transcription, biosensors, RNA, aptamers

Citation

Lee, H. , Xie, T. , Kang, B. , Yu, X. , Schaffter, S. and Schulman, R. (2024), Plug-and-play protein biosensors using aptamer-regulated in vitro transcription, Nature Communications, [online], https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-51907-4, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=956345 (Accessed October 16, 2025)