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Light-emitting self-assembled peptide nucleic acids exhibit both stacking interactions and Watson–Crick base pairing

Nature Nanotechnology volume 10, pages 353–360 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

The two main branches of bionanotechnology involve the self-assembly of either peptides or DNA. Peptide scaffolds offer chemical versatility, architectural flexibility and structural complexity, but they lack the precise base pairing and molecular recognition available with nucleic acid assemblies. Here, inspired by the ability of aromatic dipeptides to form ordered nanostructures with unique physical properties, we explore the assembly of peptide nucleic acids (PNAs), which are short DNA mimics that have an amide backbone. All 16 combinations of the very short di-PNA building blocks were synthesized and assayed for their ability to self-associate. Only three guanine-containing di-PNAs—CG, GC and GG—could form ordered assemblies, as observed by electron microscopy, and these di-PNAs efficiently assembled into discrete architectures within a few minutes. The X-ray crystal structure of the GC di-PNA showed the occurrence of both stacking interactions and Watson–Crick base pairing. The assemblies were also found to exhibit optical properties including voltage-dependent electroluminescence and wide-range excitation-dependent fluorescence in the visible region.

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Figure 1: Self-assembly of guanine-containing di-PNAs into well-ordered architectures.
Figure 2: Crystal structure of GC di-PNA.
Figure 3: The di-PNAs efficiently assemble into discrete architectures within a few minutes.
Figure 4: The PNA assemblies exhibit a red edge excitation shift with a broad range of emission wavelengths in the visible region.
Figure 5: PNA-based light-emitting FET.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by grants from the Israeli National Nanotechnology Initiative and Helmsley Charitable Trust for a focal technology area on Nanomedicine for Personalized Theranostics. The authors thank members of the Gazit Laboratory for helpful discussions, Y. Salitra for help with PNA synthesis and O. Yaniv for advice on crystallization experiments. The authors acknowledge the ESRF for synchrotron beam time and the staff scientists of the ID29 beamline for their assistance. O. Berger is supported by a fellowship from the Argentinean Friends of Tel Aviv University Association.

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  1. Felix Frolow: Deceased

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology, George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Or Berger, Lihi Adler-Abramovich, Mor Bachar, Ludmila Buzhansky, Felix Frolow & Ehud Gazit

  2. School of Chemistry, Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Michal Levy-Sakin, Assaf Grunwald, Yael Liebes-Peer, Tal Schwartz, Yuval Ebenstein & Fernando Patolsky

  3. Partnership for Structural Biology, Institut Laue Langevin, 71 Avenue des Martyrs, Grenoble Cedex 9, 38042, France

    Estelle Mossou & V. Trevor Forsyth

  4. Faculty of Natural Sciences, Keele University, Staffordshire, ST5 5BG, UK

    Estelle Mossou & V. Trevor Forsyth

  5. Daniella Rich Institute for Structural Biology, George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Felix Frolow

  6. Department of Chemical Research Support, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, 76100, Israel

    Linda J. W. Shimon

  7. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Iby and Aladar Fleischman Faculty of Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Fernando Patolsky & Ehud Gazit

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Contributions

O.B., L.A-A., L.B., Y.E. and E.G. designed the study. O.B., M.L-S., Y.L-P. and M.B. performed the experiments. O.B., A.G., T.S. and Y.E. analysed the data. F.F., L.J.W.S., E.M. and T.F. performed and analysed the X-ray diffraction experiments. F.P. performed OFET experiments. O.B., L.A-A. and E.G. prepared the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Ehud Gazit.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Berger, O., Adler-Abramovich, L., Levy-Sakin, M. et al. Light-emitting self-assembled peptide nucleic acids exhibit both stacking interactions and Watson–Crick base pairing. Nature Nanotech 10, 353–360 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2015.27

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