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A metallo-DNA nanowire with uninterrupted one-dimensional silver array

Nature Chemistry volume 9, pages 956–960 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

The double-helix structure of DNA, in which complementary strands reversibly hybridize to each other, not only explains how genetic information is stored and replicated, but also has proved very attractive for the development of nanomaterials. The discovery of metal-mediated base pairs has prompted the generation of short metal–DNA hybrid duplexes by a bottom-up approach. Here we describe a metallo-DNA nanowire—whose structure was solved by high-resolution X-ray crystallography—that consists of dodecamer duplexes held together by four different metal-mediated base pairs (the previously observed C–Ag–C, as well as G–Ag–G, G–Ag–C and T–Ag–T) and linked to each other through G overhangs involved in interduplex G–Ag–G. The resulting hybrid nanowires are 2 nm wide with a length of the order of micrometres to millimetres, and hold the silver ions in uninterrupted one-dimensional arrays along the DNA helical axis. The hybrid nanowires are further assembled into three-dimensional lattices by interactions between adenine residues, fully bulged out of the double helix.

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Figure 1: Structure of the silver–DNA hybrid nanowire.
Figure 2: Crystal of the silver–DNA hybrid nanowire and its packing.
Figure 3: Six groups of three contiguous silver-mediated base pairs observed in the DNA nanowire.
Figure 4: Top view of the silver–DNA hybrid nanowire.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) (No. 24245037) and in part by a Strategic Research Foundation Grant-aided Project for Private Universities (No. S1201015) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan. J.K. was also supported by the Murata Science Foundation. We thank the Photon Factory for the provision of synchrotron radiation facilities (No. 2013G727, 2015G533). We acknowledge Y. Matsuda at the Tokushima Bunri University for sample preparation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials and Life Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Sophia University, 7-1 Kioi-cho, Chiyoda-ku, 102-8554, Tokyo, Japan

    Jiro Kondo

  2. Graduate School of Science and Technology, Sophia University, 7-1 Kioi-cho, Chiyoda-ku, 102-8554, Tokyo, Japan

    Jiro Kondo & Yoshinari Tada

  3. School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Ohu University, 31-1 Misumido, Tomita-machi, Koriyama, 963-8611, Fukushima, Japan

    Takenori Dairaku

  4. Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tokushima Bunri University, Yamashiro-cho, 770-8514, Tokushima, Japan

    Yoshikazu Hattori & Yoshiyuki Tanaka

  5. Department of Material and Life Chemistry, Faculty of Engineering, Kanagawa University, 3-27-1 Rokkakubashi, Kanagawa-ku, 221-8686, Yokohama, Japan

    Hisao Saneyoshi & Akira Ono

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  1. Jiro Kondo
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Contributions

J.K., A.O. and Y.Tan. supervised the project. Y.Tad. and J.K. solved the crystal structure. T.D., Y.H. and Y.Tan. performed the NMR analyses. H.S. synthesized the oligonucleotides and performed preliminary experiments. All the authors contributed to discussions.

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Correspondence to Jiro Kondo.

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Kondo, J., Tada, Y., Dairaku, T. et al. A metallo-DNA nanowire with uninterrupted one-dimensional silver array. Nature Chem 9, 956–960 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.2808

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