Department of Chemistry, New York University, New York, New York 10003, USA.
Nano Lett. 2013 Feb 13;13(2):793-7. doi: 10.1021/nl304550c. Epub 2013 Jan 22.
Designed self-assembled DNA crystals consist of rigid DNA motifs that are held together by cohesive sticky-ended interactions. A prominent application of such systems is that they might be able to act as macromolecular hosts for macromolecular guests, thereby alleviating the crystallization problem of structural biology. We have recently demonstrated that it is indeed possible to design and construct such crystals and to determine their structures by X-ray diffraction procedures. To act as useful hosts that organize biological macromolecules for crystallographic purposes, maximizing the resolution of the crystals will maximize the utility of the approach. The structures reported so far have diffracted only to about 4 Å, so we have examined two factors that might have impact on the resolution. We find no difference in the resolution whether the DNA is synthetic or PCR-generated. However, we find that the presence of a phosphate on the 5'-end of the strands improves the resolution of the crystals markedly.
设计的自组装 DNA 晶体由刚性 DNA 基序组成，这些基序通过粘性末端的相互作用结合在一起。此类系统的一个突出应用是，它们可能能够作为大分子客体的大分子主体，从而缓解结构生物学中的结晶问题。我们最近证明，确实可以设计和构建此类晶体，并通过 X 射线衍射程序来确定其结构。为了作为有用的主体，将生物大分子组织起来用于晶体学目的，最大程度地提高晶体的分辨率将最大限度地提高该方法的实用性。迄今为止报道的结构仅衍射到约 4Å，因此我们检查了可能对分辨率有影响的两个因素。我们发现 DNA 是合成的还是 PCR 产生的，对分辨率没有影响。但是，我们发现链 5' 端的磷酸基团的存在明显改善了晶体的分辨率。
