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Backbone-free duplex-stacked monomer nucleic acids exhibiting Watson-Crick selectivity.
- Author(s): Smith, Gregory P;
- Fraccia, Tommaso P;
- Todisco, Marco;
- Zanchetta, Giuliano;
- Zhu, Chenhui;
- Hayden, Emily;
- Bellini, Tommaso;
- Clark, Noel A
- et al.
Published Web Location
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1721369115Abstract
We demonstrate that nucleic acid (NA) mononucleotide triphosphates (dNTPs and rNTPs), at sufficiently high concentration and low temperature in aqueous solution, can exhibit a phase transition in which chromonic columnar liquid crystal ordering spontaneously appears. Remarkably, this polymer-free state exhibits, in a self-assembly of NA monomers, the key structural elements of biological nucleic acids, including: long-ranged duplex stacking of base pairs, complementarity-dependent partitioning of molecules, and Watson-Crick selectivity, such that, among all solutions of adenosine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine NTPs and their binary mixtures, duplex columnar ordering is most stable in the A-T and C-G combinations.
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