Britton Chance Center for Biomedical Photonics at Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics - Hubei Bioinformatics & Molecular Imaging Key Laboratory, Systems Biology Theme, Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology , Wuhan 430074, China.
Anal Chem. 2014 May 6;86(9):4333-9. doi: 10.1021/ac500112d. Epub 2014 Apr 22.
The folding of G-quadruplex is hypothesized to undergo a complex process, from the formation of a hairpin structure to a triplex intermediate and to the final G-quadruplex. Currently, no experimental evidence has been found for the hairpin formation, because it folds in the time regime of 10-100 μs, entailing the development of microfluidic mixers with a mixing time of less than 10 μs. In this paper, we reported an ultrarapid micromixer with a mixing time of 5.5 μs, which represents the fastest turbulent micromixer to our best knowledge. Evaluations of the micromixer were conducted to confirm its mixing efficiency for small molecules and macromolecules. This new micromixer enabled us to interrogate the hairpin formation in the early folding process of human telomere G-quadruplex. The experimental kinetic evidence for the formation of hairpin was obtained for the first time.
四链体的折叠被假设经历一个复杂的过程，从发夹结构的形成到三链体中间态，再到最终的四链体。目前，由于发夹结构在 10-100 μs 的时间范围内折叠，因此还没有发现其形成的实验证据，这需要开发混合时间小于 10 μs 的微流控混合器。在本文中，我们报道了一种混合时间为 5.5 μs 的超快微混合器，据我们所知，这是最快的湍流微混合器。我们对微混合器进行了评估，以确认其对小分子和大分子的混合效率。这种新的微混合器使我们能够在人类端粒 G-四链体的早期折叠过程中探究发夹结构的形成。首次获得了发夹形成的实验动力学证据。
