New building blocks: nucleosomes as part of DNA origamis
More news from the Korber group
30.11.2016
Jonas J. Funke, Philip Ketterer, Corinna Lieleg, Sarah Schunter, Philipp Korber and Hendrik Dietz (2016) Uncovering the forces between nucleosomes using DNA origami. Science Advances 2(11), e1600974. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1600974
Jonas J. Funke, Philip Ketterer, Corinna Lieleg, Philipp Korber and Hendrik Dietz (2016) Exploring Nucleosome Unwrapping Using DNA Origami. Nano Letters. DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b04169
The complementary base pairing that is the basis for the well-known DNA double helix may also be used to generate other structures, as seen, for example, in the complex folding of functional RNAs. Not only RNA, but also DNA can be folded into highly intricate structures, at least in vitro. The group of Prof. Hendrik Dietz (TU Munich) specializes in building and studying such “DNA origami” nano-structures since several years and considered adding nucleosomes as new building blocks to such structures. The graduate student Corinna Lieleg in the group of PD Dr. Philipp Korber (BMC, LMU Munich) initiated the respective collaboration and designed, prepared and validated nucleosomes with single strand hybridization handles that could be incorporated into DNA origamis. As a first application, the nucleosomes were built into a hinged two-beam DNA origami device that works as a molecular force spectrometer. This way the energy landscapes of nucleosome stacking and unwrapping could be measured in an unprecedentedly direct way (Funke*, Ketterer*, Lieleg* et al., 2016, Science Advances; Funke et al., 2016, Nano Letters).
Philipp Korber heads the project A04 in the CRC 1064; Corinna Lieleg is an IRTG 1064 alumna.
Link to Science Advances paper: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/11/e1600974.figures-only
Link to Nano Letters paper: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b04169