Activities per year
Abstract
In the cell, DNA is arranged into highly-organised and topologically-constrained (supercoiled) structures. It remains unclear how this supercoiling affects the detailed double-helical structure of DNA, largely because of limitations in spatial resolution of the available biophysical tools. Here, we overcome these limitations, by a combination of atomic force microscopy (AFM) and atomistic molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, to resolve structures of negatively-supercoiled DNA minicircles at base-pair resolution. We observe that negative superhelical stress induces local variation in the canonical B-form DNA structure by introducing kinks and defects that affect global minicircle structure and flexibility. We probe how these local and global conformational changes affect DNA interactions through the binding of triplex-forming oligonucleotides to DNA minicircles. We show that the energetics of triplex formation is governed by a delicate balance between electrostatics and bonding interactions. Our results provide mechanistic insight into how DNA supercoiling can affect molecular recognition, that may have broader implications for DNA interactions with other molecular species.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 1053 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Nature Communications |
Volume | 12 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 16 Feb 2021 |
Bibliographical note
© The Author(s) 2021Activities
- 5 Media (Press)
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First videos to show the helix of ‘dancing DNA’ developed by scientists
Noy, A. (Advisor)
2021Activity: Other › Media (Press)
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Highest-Resolution Images Of DNA Ever Reveal How It “Dances”
Noy, A. (Advisor)
2021Activity: Other › Media (Press)
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Scientists Observe DNA ‘Dancing’ for the First Time Ever
Noy, A. (Advisor)
2021Activity: Other › Media (Press)
Projects
- 2 Finished
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Allocation grants to the HPC services ARCHER, Jade2, CSD3
Noy, A. (Principal investigator)
1/08/16 → 30/12/20
Project: Other project › Miscellaneous project
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Programming DNA topology: from folding DNA minicircles to revealing the spatial organization of bacterial genomes
Noy, A. (Principal investigator) & Leake, M. C. (Co-investigator)
1/07/16 → 31/12/21
Project: Research project (funded) › Research