Diagnostic aptamer selection for the beetle pheromone verbenone and its derivatives

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Infestation by a variety of beetle species has very negative economic and ecological impacts on the forestry industry of British Columbia as well as of Canada as a whole. A Burnaby, B.C., biotechnology company, eSenso Biotech, is interested in developing a variety of electronic sensing platforms for monitoring beetle pheromones, in this specific case the compound verbenone. Verbenone has been approved as a bark beetle anti-aggregation pheromone; this is important because bark beetles and mountain pine beetles are economically extremely damaging pests. Verbenone can be used with high efficacy in reducing attacks on pine forests by beetles, and this kind of treatment has been performed successfully on a variety of types of trees-- the results obtained indicating efficacies that are both tree-type- and verbenone dose-dependent. eSenso has under development a number of different detection platforms for verbenone and related compounds, but none so far that make use of the highly efficient, economic, and robust platforms that incorporate "DNA aptamers" (antibody-like, analyte-binding DNA sequences that are isolated from random-sequence DNA libraries using a powerful methodology known as "in vitro selection" or "SELEX"). My research program at Simon Fraser University has long specialized in SELEX methodologies, and we have over the years not only isolated and characterized a large number of highly diverse DNA and RNA aptamers and catalysts, but we have invented a unique approach for utilizing such aptamers in electrochemical sensing devices for the targeted antigens/analytes in question. This, our unique and SFU-patented methodology for designing highly sensitive, on-chip, electrochemical sensors incorporating DNA aptamers is known as "Deoxyribosensors" or "DORS". The eSenso company approached us to (1) obtain sensitive and high specificity DNA aptamer(s) against verbenone, and (2) design DORS devices incorporating such aptamers for sensing and quantitation of verbenone and related compounds. This initial research interaction is expected to lead to a fruitful long-term collaboration between eSenso Biotech and my laboratory.