Functional Nucleic Acids for Fluorescence-Based Biosensing Applications

Functional nucleic acids (FNAs) are single-stranded DNA or RNA molecules that are capable of carrying out the function of ligand binding (by aptamers), catalysis (by nucleic acid enzymes), or both (by aptazymes). Many FNAs have been shown to be suitable molecular recognition elements for many molecular targets, including small molecules and proteins, and have been examined for a variety of biosensing applications. In this chapter, we present a …