Discovery and translation of functional nucleic acids for clinically diagnosing infectious diseases: Opportunities and challenges

Functional nucleic acids (FNAs) are short, single-stranded nucleic acids that can be derived from synthetic nucleic acid libraries using test-tube selection experiments. Due to their excellent chemical stability, high binding affinities and specificities, compatibility with a variety of signal-transduction mechanisms, and ease of synthesis and modification, FNAs have a great potential to overcome some of the limitations of current pathogen …