Small
Small
5 years ago

Cation-Induced Stabilization and Denaturation of DNA Origami Nanostructures in Urea and Guanidinium Chloride

Cation-Induced Stabilization and Denaturation of DNA Origami Nanostructures in Urea and Guanidinium Chloride
Saminathan Ramakrishnan, Georg Krainer, Guido Grundmeier, Adrian Keller, Michael Schlierf
The stability of DNA origami nanostructures under various environmental conditions constitutes an important issue in numerous applications, including drug delivery, molecular sensing, and single-molecule biophysics. Here, the effect of Na+ and Mg2+ concentrations on DNA origami stability is investigated in the presence of urea and guanidinium chloride (GdmCl), two strong denaturants commonly employed in protein folding studies. While increasing concentrations of both cations stabilize the DNA origami nanostructures against urea denaturation, they are found to promote DNA origami denaturation by GdmCl. These inverse behaviors are rationalized by a salting-out of Gdm+ to the hydrophobic DNA base stack. The effect of cation-induced DNA origami denaturation by GdmCl deserves consideration in the design of single-molecule studies and may potentially be exploited in future applications such as selective denaturation for purification purposes. The effect of cations on DNA origami stability in the presence of the denaturing agents urea and guanidinium chloride (GdmCl) is investigated. While increasing Na+ and Mg2+ concentrations stabilize DNA origami nanostructures in urea, they promote DNA origami denaturation by GdmCl. This counterintuitive behavior is attributed to a salting-out of Gdm+ to the hydrophobic DNA base stack.

Publisher URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi

DOI: 10.1002/smll.201702100

You might also like
Discover & Discuss Important Research

Keeping up-to-date with research can feel impossible, with papers being published faster than you'll ever be able to read them. That's where Researcher comes in: we're simplifying discovery and making important discussions happen. With over 19,000 sources, including peer-reviewed journals, preprints, blogs, universities, podcasts and Live events across 10 research areas, you'll never miss what's important to you. It's like social media, but better. Oh, and we should mention - it's free.

  • Download from Google Play
  • Download from App Store
  • Download from AppInChina

Researcher displays publicly available abstracts and doesn’t host any full article content. If the content is open access, we will direct clicks from the abstracts to the publisher website and display the PDF copy on our platform. Clicks to view the full text will be directed to the publisher website, where only users with subscriptions or access through their institution are able to view the full article.