High-throughput flow cytometric screening of combinatorial chemistry bead libraries for proteomics and drug discovery

For proteomics drug discovery applications, combinatorial microbead thioaptamer libraries (one thioaptamer sequence per bead) are being created by split synthesis method, creating a "proteomics library" of protein capture beads which can be analyzed by high-throughput screening methods - in this case, flow cytometry and cell sorting Thioaptamers, oligonucleotides with thiophosphate backbone substitutions, function like antibodies in terms of recognizing specific protein sequences but have a number of advantages over antibody libraries. These proteomics beads can then be analyzed by high-speed flow cytometry and sorted to single-bead level depending on relative fluorescence brightness of fluorescently-labeled proteins, or for a specific protein from all of the molecules of cell subpopulations being analyzed. The thioaptamer sequences on a given bead showing high affinity for that protein can then be sequenced. Alternatively, the protein-capturing beads can be analyzed by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry for analysis of the bound proteins. The beads can be thought of as equivalent to single-element positions of a proteomics chip arrays but with the advantage of being able to much more rapidly analyze hundreds of millions of possible amino acid sequences/epitopes on the basis of thioaptamer sequence affinities to select single sequences of interest. Additionally, those beads can be manipulated and isolated at the single bead level by high-throughput flow cytometry/cell sorting for subsequent sequencing of the thioaptamer sequences.