Back to Search
Start Over
Trehalose facilitates DNA melting: a single-molecule optical tweezers study
- Source :
- Soft Matter. 10:7269
- Publication Year :
- 2014
- Publisher :
- Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), 2014.
-
Abstract
- Using optical tweezers, here we show that the overstretching transition force of double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) is lowered significantly by the addition of the disaccharide trehalose as well as certain polyol osmolytes. This effect is found to depend linearly on the logarithm of the trehalose concentration. We propose an entropic driving mechanism for the experimentally observed destabilization of dsDNA that is rooted in the higher affinity of the DNA bases for trehalose than for water, which promotes base exposure and DNA melting. Molecular dynamics simulation reveals the direct interaction of trehalose with nucleobases. Experiments with other osmolytes confirm that the extent of dsDNA destabilization is governed by the ratio between polar and apolar fractions of an osmolyte.
- Subjects :
- Guanine
Optical Tweezers
Polymers
DNA, Single-Stranded
Molecular Dynamics Simulation
Microscopy, Atomic Force
Nucleobase
Cytosine
Nucleic acid thermodynamics
chemistry.chemical_compound
Molecular dynamics
Molecule
Temperature
Trehalose
DNA
General Chemistry
Condensed Matter Physics
Crystallography
chemistry
Optical tweezers
Osmolyte
Biophysics
Nucleic Acid Conformation
Polystyrenes
Thermodynamics
Hydrophobic and Hydrophilic Interactions
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 17446848 and 1744683X
- Volume :
- 10
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Soft Matter
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....a8c0d06b54b737ded73ce77ca3e695cc