Poster abstracts
Poster number 20 submitted by My Bui
Versatile RNA Tetra-U Helix Linking Motif as a Toolkit for Nucleic Acid Nanotechnology
My N. Bui (Department of Chemistry, Ball State University ), Emil F. Khisamutdinov (Department of Chemistry, Ball State University )
Abstract:
Remarkable molecular recognition, structural, and functional properties of RNA molecules make them one of the most promising materials to pattern matter with nanoscale accuracy. RNA nanotechnology implies this molecule to engineer addressable nanostructures in one, two, and three dimensions. Resulting RNA nano-scaffolds have been used to precisely position functional moieties including siRNAs, RNA aptamer, ribozymes, proteins, fluorophores into deliberately designed patterns. Although the RNA nanotechnology field is emerging, the notion of production of RNA nanoparticles is no longer novel and despite all advantages, the RNA biomaterial is fragile and prone to enzymatic degradation and hydrolysis. This makes believe that RNA is not particularly convenient molecule to handle in laboratory settings. In the current report, we demonstrate computer assisted de-novo design and application of versatile RNA tetra-uracil (tetra-U) motif as a toolkit to overcome some major obstacles in RNA nanotechnology. We demonstrate that the tetra-U RNA module can be implemented to construct various nanoparticles (NPs) ranging from equilateral triangle, rectangle, pentagon, and hexagon shapes. In particular, we have extensively studied triangular nano-scaffold and demonstrated that the complex can be readily prepared from RNA, DNA or a mixture of RNA and DNA strands representing the power of simplicity of the RNA tetra-U (DNA tetra-T) motif. The fabrication of hybrid nanostructures offers multiple benefits including fine-tunable stability in blood serum, thermodynamic stability, immunostimulatory activity and notably, reduced total cost of production compared to RNA and modified RNA counterparts. The hybrid NPs remained functional as conjugating the triangles with siRNA strands targeting GFP shows significant knock-down of protein expression in human breast cancer cells. The reported work paves the way for the exploration of economically favorable RNA tetra-U toolkit for construction of fine-tunable hybrid RNA/DNA nanostructures to fulfill the needs of the rapidly developing field of RNA nanotechnology.
Keywords: RNA 3D motif, Bionanotechnology, RNA nanoparticles