Yi Xiao

About

Yi Xiao is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at NC State University, holding the titles of LORD Corporation Distinguished Scholar and University Faculty Scholar. She earned her Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from Nanjing University in China in 2000, after completing her M.S. and B.S. in Analytical Chemistry at Northwest University, China. Her research group focuses on applications of biosensors and biotechnologies at the interface of chemistry, biochemistry, and molecular biology. The main goal of her work is centered around the development of aptamer selection techniques and aptamer-based sensor platforms, aiming to create sensitive, specific, and cost-effective assays and devices for detecting medically- and forensically-relevant small-molecule targets in real-world samples.

Research topics

• Chemistry
• Biology
• Nanotechnology
• Materials science
• Biochemistry
• Computational biology
• Computer Science
• Molecular biology
• Electronic engineering
• Bioinformatics

Selected publications

• Exploring the relationship between aptamer binding thermodynamics, affinity, and specificity

  Nucleic Acids Research · 2025-03-20 · 24 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Aptamers are oligonucleotide-based bioreceptors that are selected in vitro from randomized libraries to bind specific molecules with high affinity, and are proving popular for applications in diagnostics, bioimaging, and therapeutics. A better understanding of aptamer-ligand interactions could facilitate sequence engineering efforts to improve aptamer binding properties, and perhaps eventually allow for the direct design of high-quality aptamers. To date, however, there have been very few compre…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Improving Aptamer Affinity and Determining Sequence–Activity Relationships via Motif-SELEX

  Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2025-03-07 · 20 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  via Systematic Evolution of Ligands by Exponential Enrichment (SELEX) is often limited because the entire potential sequence space cannot be screened. In this study, we introduce Motif-SELEX, a novel method that enables the optimization of existing underperforming aptamers by generating libraries that broadly represent both the sequence and length variations of the parent sequence. This approach enables the isolation of sequences with improved affinity without the biases and limitations of tradi…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Examining the Relationship between Aptamer Complexity and Molecular Discrimination of a Low-Epitope Target

  ACS Central Science · 2024-11-11 · 16 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Aptamers are oligonucleotide-based affinity reagents that are increasingly being used in various applications. Systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment (SELEX) has been widely used to isolate aptamers for small-molecule targets, but it remains challenging to generate aptamers with high affinity and specificity for targets with few functional groups. To address this challenge, we have systematically evaluated strategies for optimizing the isolation of aptamers for (+)-methampheta…

  PublisherDOI

• High-Contrast Aptamer-Based Merocyanine Displacement Assays for Sensitive Small Molecule Detection

  ACS Sensors · 2025-10-13 · 2 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Aptamer-based colorimetric dye-displacement assays offer a promising means for on-site detection due to their single-step mix-and-read procedure and rapid naked-eye readout. Here, analyte binding to noncovalent aptamer-dye complexes triggers the displacement of the dye into solution, resulting in the formation of aggregates with divergent optical absorbance properties from the monomeric aptamer-bound dye. However, these assays suffer from low sensitivity, poor color contrast, and small absorbanc…

  PublisherDOI

• Reagentless Real‐Time ATP Monitoring with New DNA Aptamers

  Small · 2025-10-16 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is essential to numerous biological processes, and there is considerable interest in methods for measuring this molecule in real time. Current ATP sensors have fundamental shortcomings that limit their utility, such as poor specificity, the need for exogenous reagents, or assay complexity. Aptamer-based biosensors have shown great promise for ATP detection, but existing aptamers have modest affinity and poor specificity that limit their practical utility. Here, the s…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Homogeneous Nuclease-Assisted SELEX for Rapid Isolation of Cross-Reactive, Functionalized Aptamers for Synthetic Cannabinoids

  NIH · $160k · 2019–2021

• Aptamer-Based, Exonuclease-Amplified, Colorimetric, Onsite Screening of Methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV) and Mephedrone in Oral Fluid

  NIH · $337k · 2015–2019

• Rapid isolation of high-affinity DNA aptamers for small-molecule targets via nuclease-assisted SELEX

  NSF · $290k · 2021–2024

Frequent coauthors

• Kevin W. Plaxco

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  42 shared

• Juan Canoura

  North Carolina State University

  40 shared

• Obtin Alkhamis

  North Carolina State University

  40 shared

• Haixiang Yu

  University of Shanghai for Science and Technology

  27 shared

• Alan J. Heeger

  21 shared

• Xiaogang Qu

  University of Science and Technology of China

  20 shared

• Yingzhu Liu

  19 shared

• Liqin Dang

  Shaanxi Normal University

  18 shared

Labs

• Yi Xiao LabPI

Education

• Ph.D., Chemistry

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  2007

• M.S., Chemistry

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  2003

• B.S., Chemistry

  University of Science and Technology of China

  2001

Similar researchers at North Carolina State University

• Jonathan Lindseyh-101
• Phil Castellanoh-86
• Masahiko Taniguchih-73