What is an Aptamer?

Aptamers area unit fiber desoxyribonucleic acid or ribonucleic acid (ssDNA or ssRNA) molecules which will bind to pre-selected targets as well as proteins and peptides with high affinity and specificity. These molecules will assume a range of shapes attributable to their propensity to create helices and fiber loops, explaining their skillfulness in binding to numerous targets. they're used as sensors, and therapeutic tools, and to manage cellular processes, still on guide medicine to their specific cellular targets. Contrary to the particular genetic material, their specificity and characteristics don't seem to be directly determined by their primary sequence, however instead by their tertiary structure.

More specifically, aptamers will be classified as:

• DNA or ribonucleic acid or XNA aptamers. They comprises (usually short) strands of oligonucleotides.
• Peptide aptamers. They comprises a brief variable amide domain, connected at each ends to a supermolecule scaffold.

Evolution of LNA Aptamers (EVOLNA)

EVOLNA is an ambitious but coherent research program with the objective of transforming the field of aptamer technology. The vision is to enable evolution of aptamers that per se possess most of the desired properties, thereby alleviating the need for extensive post-SELEX procedures. This will be realized by combining the unique properties of LNA with innovative methods for LNA aptamer evolution. LNA aptamer technology is envisioned to enable evolution of aptamers displaying maximum chemical diversity, minimum size and high biostability. The developed strategies will be applicable not only towards evolution of therapeutic aptamers, which will be the main subject of this program, but also towards evolution of aptamers for biosensing, diagnostic and imaging applications. The program is at the very frontier of biotechnology research and spans the areas of chemistry, molecular biology and drug research.

Evony

Evony (formerly known as Civony) is an Adobe Flash-based multiplayer online game with graphic elements reminiscent of Civilization. The game is set in medieval times, where a player is to establish a city, begin developing various technologies, and build supporting structures to generate armies and resources for the purpose of attacking other players and in-game opponents. Evony is also about making friends, and being part of a community, which in Evony is called an alliance. With alliances, players can share resources and defend each other from other attacking alliances.

Mexican Jay

The Mexican Jay, Aphelocoma wollweberi, formerly known as the Gray-breasted Jay, is a New World jay native to the Sierra Madre Oriental, Sierra Madre Occidental, and Central Plateau of Mexico. It reaches north to eastern Arizona, western New Mexico and western Texas in the United States. Its preferred habitat is montane pine-oak forest.

Note, in May 2011, the American Ornithologists' Union voted to split the Mexican Jay into two species, one retaining the common name Mexican Jay and one called the Transvolcanic Jay (see below).
The Mexican Jay is a medium-large (~120 g) passerine similar in size to most other jays, with a blue head, blue-gray mantle, blue wings and tail, and pale gray breast and underparts.

The sexes are morphologically similar, and juveniles differ only in having less blue coloration and, in some populations, a pink/pale (instead of black) bill that progressively becomes more black with age (Brown and Horvath 1989). Some field guides misreport this color as yellow because the pale bill becomes yellow in museum study skins. The iris is brown and legs are black. It is most readily distinguished from the similar Western Scrub-Jay by the plain (unstreaked) throat and breast, and the mantle contrasting less with the head and wings. Its range somewhat overlaps with the Western Scrub-Jays, but, where they co-occur, the two species seem to show ecological and morphological character displacement (Curry et al. 2002).

In the winter, the Mexican Jay's diet consists mainly of acorns and pine nuts, which are stored in the autumn. However, they are omnivorous in all seasons and their diet includes a wide variety of plant and animal matter, including invertebrates, small amphibians and reptiles, and birds' eggs and nestlings (McCormack and Brown 2008).