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Structural and Binding Study of Modified siRNAs with the Argonaute 2 PAZ Domain by NMR Spectroscopy
Author(s) -
Maiti Mohitosh,
Nauwelaerts Koen,
Lescrinier Eveline,
Herdewijn Piet
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
chemistry – a european journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.687
H-Index - 242
eISSN - 1521-3765
pISSN - 0947-6539
DOI - 10.1002/chem.201000765
Subject(s) - small interfering rna , stereochemistry , nucleic acid , nucleotide , rna , argonaute , biophysics , chemistry , dna , duplex (building) , biology , biochemistry , gene
By using high‐resolution NMR spectroscopy, the structures of a natural short interfering RNA (siRNA) and of several altritol nucleic acid (ANA)‐modified siRNAs were determined. The interaction of modified siRNAs with the PAZ domain of the Argonaute 2 protein of Drosophila melanogaster was also studied. The structures show that the modified siRNA duplexes (ANA/RNA) adopt a geometry very similar to the naturally occurring A‐type siRNA duplex. All ribose residues, except for the 3′ overhang, show 3′‐ endo conformation. The six‐membered altritol sugar in ANA occurs in a chair conformation with the nucleobase in an axial position. In all siRNA duplexes, two overhanging nucleotides at the 3′ end enhance the stability of the first neighboring base pair by a stacking interaction. The first overhanging nucleotide has a rather fixed position, whereas the second overhanging nucleotide shows larger flexibility. NMR binding studies of the PAZ domain with ANA‐modified siRNAs demonstrate that modifications in the double‐stranded region of the antisense strand have some small effects on the binding affinity as compared with the unmodified siRNA. Modification of the 3′ overhang with thymidine (dTdT) residues shows a sixfold increase in the binding affinity compared with the unmodified siRNA (relative binding affinity of 17 % compared with dTdT‐modified overhang), whereas modification of the 3′ overhang with ANA largely decreases the binding affinity.