G-quadruplex DNA aptamers for zeatin recognizing.

Zeatins, a major type of cytokinin, are ubiquitous in higher plants, and involve in regulating a wide range of developmental processes. The development of highly specific ligands to zeatins would be very useful in plant biological research. Here we describe a group of oligonucleotide ligands (aptamers) generated against trans-zeatin. The optimized aptamers possess strong affinity to trans-zeatin and trans-zeatin riboside (Kd=3-5 μM), and relatively weak affinity (Kd=27-30 μM) to cis-zeatin and dihydrozeatin. These aptamers adopt a hairpin-G-quadruplex structure for binding to zeatin. A fluorescence turn-on aptasensor based on graphene oxide (GO) was developed for the recognition of zeatins. The specificity assay of this aptasensor shows good response to zeatins, and no response to the adenine derivatives (analog of zeatins) abundantly existing in biological samples. These results show the great potential of these aptamers in chemical analysis and biological investigation of zeatins.