Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering Detection of Nucleic Acids Exhibiting Sterically Accessible Guanines Using Ruthenium-Polypyridyl Reagents

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Martínez-Calvo, M.; Guerrini, L.; Rodríguez, J.; Álvarez Puebla, R. A.; Mascareñas, J. L. (2020), Surface-enhanced Raman Scattering Detection of Nucleic Acids exhibiting Sterically Accessible Guanines using Ruthenium-polypyridyl Reagents. J. Phys. Chem. Lett., 11: 7218–7223, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.0c02148. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with ACS Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions Here, we report the application of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopy as a rapid and practical tool for assessing the formation of coordinative adducts between nucleic acid guanines and ruthenium polypyridyl reagents. The technology provides a practical approach for the wash-free and quick identification of nucleic acid structures exhibiting sterically accessible guanines. This is demonstrated for the detection of a quadruplex-forming sequence present in the promoter region of the c-myc oncogene, which exhibits a nonpaired, reactive guanine at a flanking position of the G-quartets We are thankful for the financial support from the Xunta de Galicia (Centro singular de investigación de Galicia accreditation 2019-2022, ED431G 2019/03) and the European Union (European Regional Development Fund – ERDF). We also acknowledge the support given by the Spanish Grant SAF2013-41943-R and SAF2016-76689-R, the Xunta de Galicia (Grants 2015-CP082, ED431C 2017/19,), the Spanish Ministry de Economia y Competitividad (CTQ2017-88648R and RYC-2016-20331), the Generalitat de Cataluña (2017SGR883), the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (2019PFR-URV-B2-02), the Universitat Rovira i Virgili and Banco Santander (2017EXIT-08), and the European Research Council (Advanced Grant No. 340055). M.M.-C. thanks the Ministerio de Economı́a y Competitividad for the Postdoctoral fellowship (IJCI-2014-19326) and the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación and Ministerio de Universidades for the Distinguished Researcher contract “Beatriz Galindo” (BEAGAL18/00144). J.R. thanks Xunta de Galicia for her predoctoral fellowship SI