Macroscopic DNA helices

作者：Subirana Juan A^*; Creixell Marc; Baldini Roberto; Campos J Lourdes

来源：Biomacromolecules, 2008, 9(1): 6-8.

DOI：10.1021/bm700994v

Presently there is great interest in the construction of nanostructures from DNA fragments. Here we report the preparation of much larger helical textures with different shapes from pure DNA fragments. We have observed them while preparing crystals of the dodecamer d(AAAAAATTTTTT), which only contains adenine and thymine. Noncoding regions of the genome are always rich in these two bases. We have found a strong influence of ions either monovalent or divalent, with which different crystalline structures are found. All of them contain long helical stacks of duplexes in the unit cell. The most remarkable structures are macroscopic helices with diameters and pitch in the range of 20-40 mu m. Thus, pure DNA oligonucleotides may form a hierarchy of helical structures, going from the B-form double helix (pitch, p = 33 angstrom) to helical stacks of duplexes (p approximate to 900 angstrom), and to macroscopic helices (p approximate to 300,000 angstrom). These different levels of organization are reminiscent of the different levels of organization of DNA in eukaryotic chromosomes.

• 出版日期2008-1