College of Life Sciences, Qingdao University, Qingdao, 266071, P.R. China.
Key Laboratory of Sensor Analysis of Tumor Marker, Ministry of Education, College of Marine Science and Biological Engineering, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, 266042, P.R. China.
Sci Rep. 2017 Jul 28;7(1):6818. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-07210-y.
Nucleic acids have been shown to be versatile molecules and engineered to produce various nanostructures. However, the poor rate of these uncatalyzed nucleic acid reactions has restricted the development and applications. Herein, we reported a novel finding that DNA self-assembly could be nonenzymatically catalyzed by artificial agents with an increasing dissociation rate constant K2. The catalytic role of several artificial agents in DNA self-assembly was verified by real-time fluorescent detection or agarose gel electrophoresis. We found that 20% PEG 200 could significantly catalyze DNA self-assembly and increase the reaction efficiency, such as linear hybridization chain reaction (HCR) and exponential hairpin assembly (EHA). Therefore, we foresee that a fast and efficient DNA self-assembly in structural DNA nanotechnology will be desirable.
核酸已被证明是多功能分子，并被设计用于产生各种纳米结构。然而，这些无催化剂核酸反应的速率较差限制了其发展和应用。在此，我们报道了一个新的发现，即 DNA 自组装可以被具有增加的离解速率常数 K2 的人工试剂非酶促催化。通过实时荧光检测或琼脂糖凝胶电泳验证了几种人工试剂在 DNA 自组装中的催化作用。我们发现 20%的 PEG 200 可以显著催化 DNA 自组装并提高反应效率，如线性杂交链式反应（HCR）和指数发夹组装（EHA）。因此，我们预计在结构 DNA 纳米技术中，快速高效的 DNA 自组装将是理想的。
