Plants rely heavily on the dispersion of nutrients from the soil throughout its life. To ensure that the plants can get what they need, farmers will often use compost to help fertilize the soil. Being that compost is mainly comprised of material in the surrounding areas, farmers will often include ingredients that have been treated with pesticides and herbicides. Specifically, picolinic acid herbicides have been shown to commonly contaminate compost. This group of herbicides is degraded entirely by microbial metabolism in soils, while not being affected by sunlight or hydrolysis. The technology that is available to detect such contamination is expensive to utilize, labor-intensive, and time-consuming. Therefore, a new detection method must be developed. This study focuses on the identification of a single-stranded DNA(ssDNA) aptamer that binds to a picolinic acid herbicide. In this study, we use a variation of the Systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment (SELEX) process to identify an aptamer that binds to the target with high affinity and specificity. The stringency of our method of SELEX and focus on negative selection will allow us to introduce our aptamer candidate into a proof-of-concept biosensing platform.

Identification of ssDNA specific to a picolinic acid herbicide

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.