Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology, George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv 69978, Israel.
School of Chemistry, Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv 69978, Israel.
Nat Nanotechnol. 2015 Apr;10(4):353-60. doi: 10.1038/nnano.2015.27. Epub 2015 Mar 16.
The two main branches of bionanotechnology involve the self-assembly of either peptides or DNA. Peptide scaffolds offer chemical versatility, architectural flexibility and structural complexity, but they lack the precise base pairing and molecular recognition available with nucleic acid assemblies. Here, inspired by the ability of aromatic dipeptides to form ordered nanostructures with unique physical properties, we explore the assembly of peptide nucleic acids (PNAs), which are short DNA mimics that have an amide backbone. All 16 combinations of the very short di-PNA building blocks were synthesized and assayed for their ability to self-associate. Only three guanine-containing di-PNAs-CG, GC and GG-could form ordered assemblies, as observed by electron microscopy, and these di-PNAs efficiently assembled into discrete architectures within a few minutes. The X-ray crystal structure of the GC di-PNA showed the occurrence of both stacking interactions and Watson-Crick base pairing. The assemblies were also found to exhibit optical properties including voltage-dependent electroluminescence and wide-range excitation-dependent fluorescence in the visible region.
生物纳米技术的两个主要分支涉及肽或 DNA 的自组装。肽支架提供了化学多功能性、结构灵活性和结构复杂性，但它们缺乏与核酸组装可用的精确碱基配对和分子识别。在这里，受芳香二肽形成具有独特物理性质的有序纳米结构的能力的启发，我们探索了肽核酸（PNA）的组装，PNA 是具有酰胺骨架的短 DNA 类似物。合成了非常短的二 PNA 构建块的所有 16 种组合，并测试了它们自组装的能力。只有三种含有鸟嘌呤的二 PNA-CG、GC 和 GG 能够形成有序的组装体，这可以通过电子显微镜观察到，并且这些二 PNA 能够在几分钟内高效地组装成离散的结构。GC 二 PNA 的 X 射线晶体结构显示出堆积相互作用和 Watson-Crick 碱基配对的发生。还发现这些组装体具有光学性质，包括电压依赖性电致发光和在可见光区域的宽激发依赖性荧光。
