Traiphothon Darunee, Awang Tadsanee, Kuntip Nattapon, Japrung Deanpen, Pongprayoon Prapasiri
Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Kasetsart University, Chatuchak, Bangkok, 10900, Thailand.
National Nanotechnology Center, National Science and Technology Development Agency, Thailand Science Park, Pathumthani, 12120, Thailand.
J Mol Graph Model. 2025 Jan;134:108881. doi: 10.1016/j.jmgm.2024.108881. Epub 2024 Oct 12.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) which are small non-coding RNAs have been reported to be potential cancer biomarker. However, it is difficult to extract such short RNA from a sample matrix. New effective strategies are required. Recently, graphene quantum dots (GQDs) have been used to detect nucleotides in many biosensor platforms, but their applications for miRNA extraction remain limited. GQD was reported to be able to collect short miRNA, but its performance to collect miRNAs with different structure remains unknown. Thus, in this work, the capability of GQD to interact with two different miRNAs is investigated. A mixture of hairpin-like miR-29a and circular miR-144 molecules are used as a representative of two miRNA morphologies. Two systems (a miRNA mixture, comprising 4 of miR-29a and 4 of miR-144, with (miR_GQD) and without GQD (miR)) were studied in comparison. MiRNAs in a mixture (miR) can aggregate, but no permanent miRNA assembly is captured. In contrast, the presence of GQD can rapidly and spontaneously activate the permanent miRNA/GQD clustering. This finding highlights the ability of GQD to be a miRNA collector. Interestingly, all GQD-bound miRNAs do not unfold. This allows the easy accessibility for probes. Also, nano-sized GQD seems to prefer hairpin miR-29a. The free 5' terminus of miR-29a acts as the sticky end to adhere on GQD. This work highlights the importance of RNA secondary structure on GQD/miRNA aggregation capability. An insight obtained here will be useful for further design of miRNA isolation strategies.
微小RNA(miRNA)是一类小的非编码RNA,据报道是潜在的癌症生物标志物。然而,从样品基质中提取这种短RNA很困难。需要新的有效策略。最近,石墨烯量子点(GQD)已被用于许多生物传感器平台中检测核苷酸,但其在miRNA提取方面的应用仍然有限。据报道,GQD能够收集短的miRNA,但其收集不同结构miRNA的性能仍不清楚。因此,在这项工作中,研究了GQD与两种不同miRNA相互作用的能力。将发夹状miR-29a和环状miR-144分子的混合物用作两种miRNA形态的代表。比较研究了两个系统(一个miRNA混合物,包含4个miR-29a和4个miR-144,有GQD(miR_GQD)和没有GQD(miR))。混合物(miR)中的miRNA可以聚集,但没有捕获到永久性的miRNA组装体。相反,GQD的存在可以快速自发地激活永久性的miRNA/GQD聚类。这一发现突出了GQD作为miRNA收集器的能力。有趣的是,所有与GQD结合的miRNA都不会展开。这使得探针易于接近。此外,纳米尺寸的GQD似乎更喜欢发夹状的miR-29a。miR-29a的游离5'末端充当粘性末端粘附在GQD上。这项工作突出了RNA二级结构对GQD/miRNA聚集能力的重要性。这里获得的见解将有助于进一步设计miRNA分离策略。
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