Aptamers (nucleic acid ligands) for trypsin-like serine proteases

Subpopulations of nucleotides that bind specifically to a variety of proteins have been isolated from a population of random sequence RNA/DNA molecules. Roughly one in <TEX>$10^{13}$</TEX> random sequence RNA/DNA molecules folds in such a way as to create a specific binding site for small ligands. Since the development of in vitro selection procedure, more than 50 nucleic acid ligands (aptamers) have been isolated. These molecules are very useful for the study of molecular recognition between nucleic acid and protein/organic compound. In addition to these basic studies this method gives us a dream to produce new drugs against several diseases. We focused on several aptamers which specifically binds to trypsin-like serine proteases (thrombin, human neutrophil elastase, activated protein C and NS3 protease of human hepatitis C virus) and want to introduce their structural characteristics and some functions.