Aptamer-based biosensors for detection of environmental pollutants

Abstract

Environmental pollutants monitoring is utmost importance for safety of living being of our ecosystem. Though the traditional detection techniques are capable of accurate analysis of environmental pollutants, there is need to develop fast, real-time and cost-efficient techniques for detecting and monitoring the environmental pollutants. Aptamer-based biosensors have shown promising performance in the detection of environmental contamination due to their high sensitivity, specificity and reusability. The aptasensor acts as an analytical device, which uses an aptamer as a ligand molecule. Aptamer is recently emerging as potential sensing elements that can replace other ligands due to its high temperature stability, low-immunogenicity, low-toxicity, high affinity and high specificity. This chapter explains the advances in development of aptasensor and its applications in the detection of various environmental contaminants.