处于张力下的发夹结构：RNA与DNA的比较

Bercy Mathilde, Bockelmann Ulrich

Laboratoire de Nanobiophysique, ESPCI ParisTech, 10 rue Vauquelin, Paris 75005, France.

Laboratoire de Nanobiophysique, ESPCI ParisTech, 10 rue Vauquelin, Paris 75005, France

Nucleic Acids Res. 2015 Nov 16;43(20):9928-36. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkv860. Epub 2015 Aug 31.

We use optical tweezers to control the folding and unfolding of individual DNA and RNA hairpins by force. Four hairpin molecules are studied in comparison: two DNA and two RNA ones. We observe that the conformational dynamics is slower for the RNA hairpins than for their DNA counterparts. Our results indicate that structures made of RNA are dynamically more stable. This difference might contribute to the fact that DNA and RNA play fundamentally different biological roles in spite of chemical similarity.

我们使用光镊通过施加力来控制单个DNA和RNA发夹的折叠与展开。我们比较研究了四种发夹分子：两种DNA发夹和两种RNA发夹。我们观察到，RNA发夹的构象动力学比其对应的DNA发夹更慢。我们的结果表明，由RNA构成的结构在动力学上更稳定。尽管DNA和RNA在化学性质上相似，但这种差异可能有助于解释它们在生物学中发挥着根本不同的作用这一事实。