Poster abstracts

Poster number 18 submitted by My Bui

Construction of Nucleic Acid Nano-architectures Based on Flexible tetra-U Linking Module

My N. Bui (Department of Chemistry, Ball State University, Muncie IN 47306), Garrett A. Drinnon (Department of Chemistry, Ball State University, Muncie IN 47306), Emil F. Khisamutdinov (Department of Chemistry, Ball State University, Muncie IN 47306)

Abstract:
The progression in the field of RNA nanotechnology involves the design and synthesis of artificial RNA nanoparticles with wide spectra of applications in pharmacology, medicine, biomaterials, electronics etc. The unique properties of RNA molecules to form non-canonical, local or long- range interactions result in a large library of structural motifs that can be used for RNA nanoparticle construction. Naturally occurring RNA 3D motifs have been used previously in architectonics, which is a computer-aided approach for design artificial RNA nanostructures in a controllable fashion. However, most of the natural RNA modules fold into desired 3D conformations only if certain conditions are satisfied, e.g. pH, presence of mono- and/or divalent ions, and proteins. Here, we report the design and characterization of a variety of RNA nanoarchitectures designed in silico using an artificial tetra U-linking RNA module. This flexible RNA building block can be used to design RNA nanoparticles with a variety of geometrical shapes, utilizing an approach previously reported by Khisamutdinov, et. al. 2015. We found that the RNA nanoarchitectures, including a triangle, square, pentagon and hexagon, possess similar self-assembly properties in vitro, with an individual nanoparticle yield of 65.0 ± 6.0 %. The measured melting points by means of UV-thermal denaturation resulted in similar TM values of 80.0 ± 2.0 °C. We further demonstrated that nanoparticles can be assembled with high efficiency, either from a mixture of DNA and RNA or from DNA strands alone. This study demonstrates the importance of artificial RNA building blocks for the RNA nanotechnology field.

References:
Khisamutdinov, E. F., M. N. Bui, D. Jasinski, Z. Zhao, Z. Cui and P. Guo 2015 Simple Method for Constructing RNA Triangle, Square, Pentagon by Tuning Interior RNA 3WJ Angle from 60 degrees to 90 degrees or 108 degrees. Methods Mol Biol 1316:181-193.

Keywords: RNA nanotechnology, Nucleic acid nanoparticles, RNA 3D motif