Aptamer lateral flow assays for rapid and sensitive detection of cholera toxin.

Aptamers are envisioned to serve as powerful synthetic substitutes to antibodies in a variety of bioanalytical assay formats. However, lateral flow assays (LFAs) remain dominated by antibody-based strategies. In this study, a LFA for the detection of cholera toxin as a model analyte is developed and optimized using a synthetic aptamer and a naturally occurring receptor as biorecognition elements and directly compared with solely aptamer and aptamer and antibody-based alternative approaches.

Secretome profiling of Propionibacterium freudenreichii reveals highly variable responses even among the closely related strains.

This study compared the secretomes (proteins exported out of the cell) of Propionibacterium freudenreichii of different origin to identify plausible adaptation factors. Phylosecretomics indicated strain-specific variation in secretion of adhesins/invasins (SlpA, InlA), cell-wall hydrolysing (NlpC60 peptidase, transglycosylase), protective (RpfB) and moonlighting (DnaK, GroEL, GaPDH, IDH, ENO, ClpB) enzymes and/or proteins. Detailed secretome comparison suggested that one of the cereal strains (JS14) released a tip fimbrillin (FimB) in to the extracellular milieu, which was in line with the electron microscopy and genomic analyses, indicating the lack of surface-associated fimbrial-like structures, predicting a mutated type-2 fimbrial gene cluster (fimB-fimA-srtC2) and production of anchorless FimB.

Highly affine and selective aptamers against cholera toxin as capture elements in magnetic bead-based sandwich ELAA.

Aptamers are single-stranded DNA or RNA oligonucleotides, which have been emerging as recognition elements in disease diagnostics and food control, including the detection of bacterial toxins. In this study, we employed the semi-automated just in time-selection to identify aptamers that bind to cholera toxin (CT) with high affinity and specificity. CT is the main virulence factor of Vibrio cholerae and the causative agent of the eponymous disease.

Food Sensing: Aptamer-Based Trapping of Bacillus cereus Spores with Specific Detection via Real Time PCR in Milk.

Aerobic spores pose serious problems for both food product manufacturers and consumers. Milk is particularly at risk and thus an important issue of preventive consumer protection and quality assurance. The spore-former Bacillus cereus is a food poisoning Gram-positive pathogen which mainly produces two different types of toxins, the diarrhea inducing and the emetic toxins.