Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Department of Polymer Science and Engineering and the Key Laboratory of Polymer Chemistry and Physics of the Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University , Beijing 100871, China.
Key Laboratory of Organic Optoelectronics & Molecular Engineering of the Ministry of Education, Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University , Beijing 100084, China.
Langmuir. 2016 Dec 6;32(48):12862-12868. doi: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.6b03299. Epub 2016 Nov 21.
The kinetics of DNA assembly is determined not only by temperature but also by the flexibility of the DNA tiles. In this work, the flexibility effect was studied with a model system of Y-junctions, which contain single-stranded thymine (T) loops in the center. It was demonstrated that the incorporation of a loop with only one thymine prominently improved the assembly rate and tuned the final structure of the assembly, whereas the incorporation of a loop of two thymines exhibited the opposite effect. These observations could be explained by the conformation adjustment rate and the intermotif binding strength. Increasing DNA concentration hindered the conformational adjustment rate of DNA strands, leading to the formation of hydrogels in which the network was connected by ribbons. Therefore, the gel can be treated as a metastable state during the phase transition.
DNA 组装的动力学不仅取决于温度，还取决于 DNA 瓦片的柔韧性。在这项工作中，使用 Y 型结模型系统研究了柔韧性效应，该模型系统在中心包含单链胸腺嘧啶 (T) 环。结果表明，仅包含一个胸腺嘧啶的环的掺入显著提高了组装速率，并调整了组装的最终结构，而包含两个胸腺嘧啶的环的掺入则表现出相反的效果。这些观察结果可以通过构象调整速率和基序间结合强度来解释。增加 DNA 浓度会阻碍 DNA 链的构象调整速率，导致形成由带状物连接的网络的水凝胶。因此，在相变过程中，凝胶可以被视为亚稳态。
