A single molecule study of a fluorescently labeled telomestatin derivative and G-quadruplex interactions

July 28, 2017

Title

A single molecule study of a fluorescently labeled telomestatin derivative and G-quadruplex interactions

Author

Parastoo Maleki, Yue Ma, Keisuke Iida, Kazuo Nagasawa, Hamza Balci

Year

2016

Journal

Nucleic Acids Research

Abstract

The potential use of G-quadruplex (GQ) stabilizing small molecules as anti-cancer drugs has created a flurry of activity on various aspects of these molecules. Telomestatin and oxazole telomestatin derivatives (OTD) are some of the most prominent of such molecules, yet the underlying dynamics of their interactions with GQ and the extent of heterogeneities in these interactions are not known. We performed single molecule measurements to study binding kinetics, rotational freedom, and dwell time distributions of a Cy5-labeled OTD (L1Cy5–7OTD) as it interacted with several different GQ structures. Our measurements show that L1Cy5–7OTD dwells on more stable GQ for longer times and binds to such GQ with higher frequency. The dwell times showed a broad distribution, but were longer than a minute for a significant fraction of molecules (characteristic dwell time = 192 ± 15 s and = 98 ± 15 s for the more and less stable GQ, respectively). In addition, L1Cy5–7OTD might be able to bind to GQ in at least two different primary orientations and occasionally transition between these orientations. The dwell time in one of these orientations was significantly longer than that in the other one, suggesting different stabilities for different binding orientations.

Instrument

J-810

Keywords

Circular dichroism, DNA structure, Biochemistry