Opposite Effects of High-Valent Cations on the Elasticities of DNA and RNA Duplexes Revealed by Magnetic Tweezers

We report that trivalent cobalt hexammine cations decrease the persistence length, stretching modulus, helical density, and size of plectonemes formed under torque of DNA but increase those of RNA. Divalent magnesium cations, however, decrease the persistence lengths, contour lengths, and sizes of p...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2020-02, Vol.124 (5), p.058101-058101, Article 058101
Main Authors: Fu, Hang, Zhang, Chen, Qiang, Xiao-Wei, Yang, Ya-Jun, Dai, Liang, Tan, Zhi-Jie, Zhang, Xing-Hua
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cations
Cations - chemistry
Cobalt - chemistry
Deoxyribonucleic acid
DNA
DNA - chemistry
Elasticity
Magnesium
Magnesium - chemistry
Magnetics - instrumentation
Magnetics - methods
Models, Chemical
Models, Molecular
Molecular dynamics
Molecular Dynamics Simulation
Optical Tweezers
Ribonucleic acid
RNA
RNA - chemistry
RNA, Double-Stranded - chemistry
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Summary:We report that trivalent cobalt hexammine cations decrease the persistence length, stretching modulus, helical density, and size of plectonemes formed under torque of DNA but increase those of RNA. Divalent magnesium cations, however, decrease the persistence lengths, contour lengths, and sizes of plectonemes while increasing the helical densities of both DNA and RNA. The experimental results are explained by different binding modes of the cations on DNA and RNA in our all-atom molecular dynamics simulations. The significant variations of the helical densities and structures of DNA and RNA duplexes induced by high-valent cations may affect interactions of the duplexes with proteins.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.058101