Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 111, Issue 43, Pages 15408-15413Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1407197111
Keywords
RNA; nucleic acids; magnetic tweezers; force; torque
Categories
Funding
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute International Student Research Fellowship
- Stanford BioX Graduate Student Fellowship
- Burroughs-Wellcome Career Award at the Scientific Interface
- National Institutes of Health [R01GM100953]
- Delft University of Technology
- VENI grant of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research
- European Research Council
- European Science Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
RNA plays myriad roles in the transmission and regulation of genetic information that are fundamentally constrained by its mechanical properties, including the elasticity and conformational transitions of the double-stranded (dsRNA) form. Although double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) mechanics have been dissected with exquisite precision, much less is known about dsRNA. Here we present a comprehensive characterization of dsRNA under external forces and torques using magnetic tweezers. We find that dsRNA has a force-torque phase diagram similar to that of dsDNA, including plectoneme formation, melting of the double helix induced by torque, a highly overwound state termed P-RNA, and a highly under-wound, left-handed state denoted L-RNA. Beyond these similarities, our experiments reveal two unexpected behaviors of dsRNA: Unlike dsDNA, dsRNA shortens upon overwinding, and its characteristic transition rate at the plectonemic buckling transition is two orders of magnitude slower than for dsDNA. Our results challenge current models of nucleic acid mechanics, provide a baseline for modeling RNAs in biological contexts, and pave the way for new classes of magnetic tweezers experiments to dissect the role of twist and torque for RNA-protein interactions at the single-molecule level.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available