Song Yujie, Xie Xiao, Liu Yang, Zhu Zhen, Sun Litao
SEU-FEI Nano-Pico Center, Key Laboratory of MEMS of Ministry of Education, School of Electronic Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China.
School of Integrated Circuits, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China.
ACS Omega. 2023 Jul 10;8(29):26325-26331. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.3c02823. eCollection 2023 Jul 25.
Metal ions are indispensable constituent elements of the human body, among which Cu plays an important role in various biochemical reactions in the human body and is an essential element for maintaining human health. Studying the interaction between Cu and DNA can be helpful to further understand the mechanism of Cu behavior in organisms. In this paper, we investigated the DNA-Cu complex by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and used in situ liquid-cell TEM to observe the dynamic processes of interactions between DNA and Cu. Results show that the binding of Cu to DNA leads to the bending of the DNA strand and provides an anchor site for activating Cu for the nucleation and growth of copper crystals. Bound by the DNA strand, the copper crystals are arranged along the curved strand, showing the same arrangement pattern as guanine on the DNA sequence. It is believed that the study will further elaborate the interaction mechanism by directly observing the DNA-Cu complex at the nanometer scale and benefit the related biomedical research studies.
金属离子是人体不可或缺的组成元素，其中铜在人体各种生化反应中发挥着重要作用，是维持人体健康的必需元素。研究铜与DNA之间的相互作用有助于进一步了解铜在生物体内的行为机制。在本文中，我们通过透射电子显微镜（TEM）研究了DNA - 铜复合物，并使用原位液池TEM观察了DNA与铜之间相互作用的动态过程。结果表明，铜与DNA的结合导致DNA链弯曲，并为激活铜以促进铜晶体的成核和生长提供了一个锚定位点。受DNA链束缚，铜晶体沿弯曲的链排列，呈现出与DNA序列上鸟嘌呤相同的排列模式。相信该研究将通过在纳米尺度直接观察DNA - 铜复合物进一步阐述相互作用机制，并有益于相关生物医学研究。
