Summary information and primary citation
- PDB-id
-
6wk7;
DSSR-derived features in text and
JSON formats
- Class
- DNA
- Method
- X-ray (2.423 Å)
- Summary
- Crystal structure analysis of a poly(thymine) DNA
duplex
- Reference
-
Li Q, Zhao J, Liu L, Jonchhe S, Rizzuto FJ, Mandal S, He
H, Wei S, Sleiman HF, Mao H, Mao C (2020): "A
poly(thymine)-melamine duplex for the assembly of DNA
nanomaterials." Nat Mater,
19, 1012-1018. doi: 10.1038/s41563-020-0728-2.
- Abstract
- The diversity of DNA duplex structures is limited by a
binary pair of hydrogen-bonded motifs. Here we show that
poly(thymine) self-associates into antiparallel,
right-handed duplexes in the presence of melamine, a small
molecule that presents a triplicate set of the
hydrogen-bonding face of adenine. X-ray crystallography
shows that in the complex two poly(thymine) strands wrap
around a helical column of melamine, which hydrogen bonds
to thymine residues on two of its three faces. The
mechanical strength of the thymine-melamine-thymine triplet
surpasses that of adenine-thymine base pairs, which enables
a sensitive detection of melamine at 3 pM. The
poly(thymine)-melamine duplex is orthogonal to native DNA
base pairing and can undergo strand displacement without
the need for overhangs. Its incorporation into
two-dimensional grids and hybrid DNA-small-molecule
polymers highlights the poly(thymine)-melamine duplex as an
additional tool for DNA nanotechnology.
