As the most widely used and typical kind of plasticizers, phthalate esters (PAEs) have become one of the most common environmental pollutants in the world. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a rapid and convenient method for determining the total amount of PAEs. Herein, a molecularly tailored broad-spectrum aptamer that can recognize multiple similarly structured total amounts of PAEs (TP) and bind them with high affinity has been successfully fabricated. Mfold (multiple folding) secondary structure simulation and molecular truncation were both utilized to obtain the most effective binding region from the parental full-length (39-mer) aptamer. The results show that the PAE-binding affinity of the truncated 24-mer aptamer produced by removing nonessential flanking nucleotides was improved by 1.5-fold. The linear range of TP detection is 0.003–10 μg/L, and the limit of detection is 1 ng/L. Notably, our study provides new insights into the group-targeting identification of certain pollutants and determination of their total amounts, exhibiting great potential for practical applications.

作为最广泛使用和最典型的增塑剂，邻苯二甲酸酯（PAE）已成为世界上最常见的环境污染物之一。因此，有必要开发一种快速方便的方法来确定PAE的总量。在此，已经成功地制备了分子定制的广谱适体，其可识别多个相似结构的总量的PAE（TP）并以高亲和力结合它们。Mfold（多重折叠）二级结构模拟和分子截短法均用于从亲本全长（39-mer）适体中获得最有效的结合区。结果表明，通过去除不必要的侧翼核苷酸而产生的截短的24聚体适体的PAE结合亲和力提高了1.5倍。TP检测的线性范围为0。003–10μg/ L，检出限为1 ng / L。值得注意的是，我们的研究为确定某些污染物的组群目标并确定其总量提供了新的见识，在实际应用中显示出巨大的潜力。