A DNA tweezer-actuated enzyme nanoreactor

Minghui Liu, Jinglin Fu (), Christian Hejesen, Yuhe Yang, Neal W. Woodbury, Kurt Gothelf, Yan Liu and Hao Yan ()
Additional contact information
Minghui Liu: Center for Single Molecule Biophysics, Biodesign Institute, Arizona State University
Jinglin Fu: Center for Single Molecule Biophysics, Biodesign Institute, Arizona State University
Christian Hejesen: Centre for DNA Nanotechnology, Aarhus University
Yuhe Yang: Center for Single Molecule Biophysics, Biodesign Institute, Arizona State University
Neal W. Woodbury: Arizona State University
Kurt Gothelf: Centre for DNA Nanotechnology, Aarhus University
Yan Liu: Center for Single Molecule Biophysics, Biodesign Institute, Arizona State University
Hao Yan: Center for Single Molecule Biophysics, Biodesign Institute, Arizona State University

Nature Communications, 2013, vol. 4, issue 1, 1-5

Abstract: Abstract The functions of regulatory enzymes are essential to modulating cellular pathways. Here we report a tweezer-like DNA nanodevice to actuate the activity of an enzyme/cofactor pair. A dehydrogenase and NAD+ cofactor are attached to different arms of the DNA tweezer structure and actuation of enzymatic function is achieved by switching the tweezers between open and closed states. The enzyme/cofactor pair is spatially separated in the open state with inhibited enzyme function, whereas in the closed state, enzyme is activated by the close proximity of the two molecules. The conformational state of the DNA tweezer is controlled by the addition of specific oligonucleotides that serve as the thermodynamic driver (fuel) to trigger the change. Using this approach, several cycles of externally controlled enzyme inhibition and activation are successfully demonstrated. This principle of responsive enzyme nanodevices may be used to regulate other types of enzymes and to introduce feedback or feed-forward control loops.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3127 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:4:y:2013:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms3127

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms3127

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().