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Toehold‐Mediated Displacement of an Adenosine‐Binding Aptamer from a DNA Duplex by its Ligand
Author(s) -
Monserud Jon H.,
Macri Katherine M.,
Schwartz Daniel K.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
angewandte chemie
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1521-3757
pISSN - 0044-8249
DOI - 10.1002/ange.201603458
Subject(s) - aptamer , dna , biophysics , dna nanotechnology , förster resonance energy transfer , chemistry , nucleic acid , branch migration , a dna , oligonucleotide , ligand (biochemistry) , duplex (building) , biochemistry , biology , microbiology and biotechnology , dna repair , holliday junction , fluorescence , physics , receptor , quantum mechanics
DNA is increasingly used to engineer dynamic nanoscale circuits, structures, and motors, many of which rely on DNA strand‐displacement reactions. The use of functional DNA sequences (e.g., aptamers, which bind to a wide range of ligands) in these reactions would potentially confer responsiveness on such devices, and integrate DNA computation with highly varied molecular stimuli. By using high‐throughput single‐molecule FRET methods, we compared the kinetics of a putative aptamer–ligand and aptamer–complement strand‐displacement reaction. We found that the ligands actively disrupted the DNA duplex in the presence of a DNA toehold in a similar manner to complementary DNA, with kinetic details specific to the aptamer structure, thus suggesting that the DNA strand‐displacement concept can be extended to functional DNA–ligand systems.