Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Morfill, Julia
• Kühner, Ferdinand
• Blank, Kerstin
• Lugmaier, Robert A.
• Sedlmair, Julia
• Gaub, Hermann E.

Titel

B-S Transition in Short Oligonucleotides

Ist Teil von

• Biophysical journal, 2007-10, Vol.93 (7), p.2400-2409

Ort / Verlag

United States: Elsevier Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

2007

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Free E-Journal (出版社公開部分のみ）

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Stretching experiments with long double-stranded DNA molecules in physiological ambient revealed a force-induced transition at a force of 65 pN. During this transition between B-DNA and highly overstretched S-DNA the DNA lengthens by a factor of 1.7 of its B-form contour length. Here, we report the occurrence of this so-called B-S transition in short duplexes consisting of 30 basepairs. We employed atomic-force-microscope-based single molecule force spectroscopy to explore the unbinding mechanism of two short duplexes containing 30 or 20 basepairs by pulling at the opposite 5′ termini. For a 30-basepair-long DNA duplex the B-S transition is expected to cause a length increase of 6.3 nm and should therefore be detectable. Indeed 30% of the measured force-extension curves exhibit a region of constant force (plateau) at 65 pN, which corresponds to the B-S transition. The observed plateaus show a length between 3 and 7 nm. This plateau length distribution indicates that the dissociation of a 30-basepair duplex mainly occurs during the B-S transition. In contrast, the measured force-extension curves for a 20-basepair DNA duplex exhibited rupture forces below 65 pN and did not show any evidence of a B-S transition.