Pal Nibedita
Single Molecule Biophysics Lab, Department of Biology, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Tirupati, Tirupati, India.
Front Mol Biosci. 2022 Mar 7;9:835617. doi: 10.3389/fmolb.2022.835617. eCollection 2022.
DNA nanostructures often involve temporally evolving spatial features. Tracking these temporal behaviors in real time requires sophisticated experimental methods with sufficiently high spatial and temporal resolution. Among the several strategies developed for this purpose, single-molecule FRET (smFRET) offers avenues to observe the structural rearrangement or locomotion of DNA nanostructures in real time and quantitatively measure the kinetics as well at the single nanostructure level. In this mini review, we discuss a few applications of smFRET-based techniques to study DNA nanostructures. These examples exemplify how smFRET signals not only have played an important role in the characterization of the nanostructures but also often have helped to improve the design and overall performance of the nanostructures and the devices designed from those structures. Overall, this review consolidates the potential of smFRET in providing crucial quantitative information on structure-function relations in DNA nanostructures.
DNA纳米结构通常涉及随时间演变的空间特征。实时追踪这些时间行为需要具有足够高空间和时间分辨率的复杂实验方法。在为此目的开发的几种策略中，单分子荧光共振能量转移（smFRET）提供了实时观察DNA纳米结构的结构重排或移动并在单个纳米结构水平上定量测量动力学的途径。在本微型综述中，我们讨论了基于smFRET的技术在研究DNA纳米结构方面的一些应用。这些例子说明了smFRET信号不仅在纳米结构的表征中发挥了重要作用，而且常常有助于改进纳米结构以及由这些结构设计的器件的设计和整体性能。总体而言，本综述巩固了smFRET在提供有关DNA纳米结构中结构-功能关系的关键定量信息方面的潜力。
