Abstract

Carbohydrates have been revealed to play fundamental roles in diverse biological phenomena, such as being recognition sites and biomarkers. Recently, ample nucleic acid aptamers guided for carbohydrate recognition have already been isolated and characterized through SELEX methodology. This review would like to present and discuss these aptamers toward recognizing various carbohydrate targets: monosaccharides, oligosaccharides, polysaccharides, aminoglycoside antibiotics and glycans from glycoproteins. High affinity carbohydrate aptamers that we survey herein might shed light on the development of a tool to augment drug discovery creations.

Keywords: Carbohydrate recognition, Aptamers, Monosaccharides, Oligosaccharides, Polysaccharides, Aminoglycoside antibiotics, Glycoproteins