• Aptamers: potential future targets to control drug-resistant bacteria
  • Fatemeh Jalali,1 Safa Hatamian,2 Fatemeh Mahmoudimeymand,3 Siamak Javani,4,*
    1. Department of Nanomedicine School of Advanced Technologies in Medicine, Golestan University of Medical Sciences, Gorgan, Iran
    2. Department of Nanomedicine School of Advanced Technologies in Medicine, Golestan University of Medical Sciences, Gorgan, Iran
    3. Department of Nanomedicine School of Advanced Technologies in Medicine, Golestan University of Medical Sciences, Gorgan, Iran
    4. Department of Nanomedicine School of Advanced Technologies in Medicine, Golestan University of Medical Sciences, Gorgan, Iran


  • Introduction: Antibiotics have been very effective in controlling pathogens, and resistance mechanisms developed in bacteria, but due to the increasing gap between the therapeutic effects of antibiotics and drug resistance, finding new antimicrobial agents are needed, which can be overcome by aptamer-based antimicrobials. Aptamers can interfere with the pathogen's biochemical pathways and interfere with the pathogen's conjugation process to prevent infection and reduce the pathogenicity of bacteria. In order for aptamers to interfere with the biochemical processes of a pathogen, they must be selected as receptor protein antagonists, as they must inhibit the pathogen's ability to infect.
  • Methods: Articles from 2005-2022 were reviewed in Google Scholar, PubMed, and Scopus databases with the keywords aptamer, aptasensor, and microbial drug resistance. And extracting information from basic studies.
  • Results: A study was conducted to inhibit PPK2 based on aptamer. Inorganic polyphosphate (polyP) is responsible for roles in bacterial virulence and stress resistance and is regulated by PPK protein families. PPK2 was characterized and used to develop DNA-based aptamers that inhibit the enzyme's catalytic activity. The selected aptamer showed strong selectivity for binding with PPK2 and inhibited it after binding. In another study, an RNA aptamer was chosen to bind to bacterial type IVB pili. This aptamer binding was able to inhibit the entry of pili-containing strains of pathogenic bacteria into human monocytic leukemia cells. Several DNA aptamers were developed to target and control infections caused by E. coli via lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or whole-cell O157:H7 as targets. who developed an aptamer-based colorimetric detection method for O157:H7 using truncated DNA aptamers against LPS, with a detection limit of 10,000 CFU/mL. Furthermore, in a similar study, DNA aptamer on a hydrothermally grown ZnO nanowire array was used to construct a high-performance photoelectrochemical aptasensor for the detection of O157:H7, with a detection limit of 1.125 CFU/mL. A DNA aptamer targeting the outer membrane proteins of S. enterica serotype Typhimurium was selected and an aptamer-based trapping PCR detection method with a detection limit of 1 CFU/mL was developed using it. This aptamer was widely used in various detection methods based on different aptasensor technologies, with detection limits ranging from 1 to 1000 CFU/mL.
  • Conclusion: This review states that aptamers can be generated against whole pathogens, pathogen components, pathogen or disease markers, microbial toxins, or pathogen-infected host cells for pathogen detection or disease diagnosis. These aptamers can then be combined with different platforms to optimize detection speed, convenience, cost-effectiveness, and simplicity. For therapeutic purposes, aptamers can be directed against (1) surface components of pathogens or host cell receptors to prevent host cell entry or drug delivery, (2) essential proteins and enzymes to prevent pathogen propagation, and (3) chose microbial toxins to relieve the symptoms.
  • Keywords: Aptamer, Aptsensor, Microbial drug resistance