Soh Beatrice W, Doyle Patrick S
Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, United States.
ACS Macro Lett. 2021 Jul 20;10(7):880-885. doi: 10.1021/acsmacrolett.1c00299. Epub 2021 Jun 25.
A kinetoplast is a planar network of catenated DNA rings with topology that resembles that of chain mail armor. In this work, we use single-molecule experiments to probe the conformation of kinetoplasts confined to slits. We find that the in-plane size of kinetoplasts increases with degree of confinement, akin to the slitlike confinement of linear DNA. The change in kinetoplast size with channel height is consistent with the scaling prediction from a Flory-type approach for a 2D polymer. With an increase in extent of confinement, the kinetoplasts appear to unfold and take on more uniform circular shapes, in contrast to the broad range of conformations observed for kinetoplasts in bulk.
动质体是由连环DNA环组成的平面网络，其拓扑结构类似于锁子甲。在这项工作中，我们使用单分子实验来探测限制在狭缝中的动质体的构象。我们发现，动质体的平面内尺寸随着限制程度的增加而增大，这类似于线性DNA的狭缝状限制。动质体尺寸随通道高度的变化与二维聚合物的弗洛里型方法的标度预测一致。随着限制程度的增加，动质体似乎展开并呈现出更均匀的圆形，这与在本体中观察到的动质体的广泛构象形成对比。
