Nucleic Acid Aptamers in Bacteriology: Mapping the Landscape, Exploring Bioimaging Applications, Challenges, and Future Perspectives

Abstract Antibiotic resistance is becoming increasingly widespread, underlining the importance of rapid, accurate identification of bacterial infections for effective diagnostic, clinical, and environmental management. While next-generation sequencing excels at genetic characterization, it falls short in real-time, in situ detection, a critical gap where nucleic acid aptamers emerge as a compelling alternative. These synthetic oligonucleotides enable direct, low-cost, and versatile detection of bacterial targets without requiring DNA extraction or amplification. Their portability supports point-of-care diagnostics, while their molecular precision enables integration into advanced bioimaging platforms for non-invasive, real-time, spatial, and functional monitoring of pathogens in biological environments. This perspective explores the potential of aptamers for bacterial bioimaging, assessing the landscape of bacterial-targeting aptamers, zooming in on aptamer-based bioimaging approaches for bacterial detection, addressing key challenges, and outlining future opportunities, such as real-time dynamic infection imaging and theranostics, polyclonal/multivalent aptamers, multiplex imaging, aptamer-based biosensors, and AI-driven detection.