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The polarization dependence of 2D IR cross-peaks distinguishes parallel-stranded and antiparallel-stranded DNA G-quadruplexes

Overview of Price DA et al.

AuthorsPrice DA  Wedamulla P  Hill TD  Loth TM  Moran SD  
AffiliationSchool of Chemical and Biomolecular Sciences   Southern Illinois University Carbondale   1245 Lincoln Drive MC 4409   Carbondale   IL 62901   United States. Electronic address: smoran@chem.siu.edu.  
JournalSpectrochim Acta A Mol Biomol Spectrosc
Year 2021

Abstract


Guanine-rich nucleic acid sequences have a tendency to form four-stranded non-canonical motifs known as G-quadruplexes. These motifs may adopt a wide range of structures characterized by size, strand orientation, guanine base conformation, and fold topology. Using three K(+)-bound model systems, we show that vibrational coupling between guanine C6 = O and ring modes varies between parallel-stranded and antiparallel-stranded G-quadruplexes, and that such structures can be distinguished by comparison of the polarization dependences of cross-peaks in their two-dimensional infrared (2D IR) spectra. Combined with previously defined vibrational frequency trends, this analysis reveals key features of a 30-nucleotide unimolecular variant of the Bcl-2 proximal promoter that are consistent with its reported structure. This study shows that 2D IR spectroscopy is a convenient method for analyzing G-quadruplex structures that can be applied to complex sequences where traditional high-resolution methods are limited by solubility and disorder.