Relaxase engineering for multiprotein assembly on DNA nanostructures

ABSTRACT: In the last decade, nanostructures made from DNA have been created with any imaginable shape. For the application of these DNA-based nanostructures (DNA origamis) in biomedicine, new approaches are required for covalent coupling of proteins to DNA. In this thesis, we focused in the applica...

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Bibliographic Details
Author: Sagredo de Pedro, Sandra
Format: doctoral thesis
Publication Date:2016
Country:España
Institution:Universidad de Cantabria (UC)
Repository:UCrea Repositorio Abierto de la Universidad de Cantabria
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.unican.es:10902/8582
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10902/8582
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Relaxasas
Conjugación bacteriana
Origami de ADN
Nanotecnología
Bioconjugación
Relaxases
Bacterial conjugation
DNA origami
Nanotechnology
Bioconjugation
Description
Summary:ABSTRACT: In the last decade, nanostructures made from DNA have been created with any imaginable shape. For the application of these DNA-based nanostructures (DNA origamis) in biomedicine, new approaches are required for covalent coupling of proteins to DNA. In this thesis, we focused in the application of relaxases for site-specific covalent conjugation of proteins to single stranded DNA extensions on DNA origamis. Relaxases are involved in DNA processing for bacterial conjugation, which is a process of DNA transfer from a donor to a recipient cell. Relaxases are capable of forming a covalent phosphotyrosine bond with specific DNA sequences. Three of the four relaxases investigated, TrwCR388 TraIR100 and MobAR1162, showed good binding performance to DNA origamis with high specificity and orthogonality. We have also studied the relaxases as a new tool for polymerization of single and double stranded DNA (dsDNA), or even polymerization of DNA origamis. Our goal was also the improvement of the reaction performed by relaxases. For this purpose, we have modified the recognition sequence of relaxases with secondary structures mimicking the stem-loop recognized and cleaved by replicases. We have also used substrates with a permutation between the nic site and the inverted repeat (reverse conformation), and also substrates with dsDNA around the nic site. We found that the percentage of covalent complexes with TrwCR388 improved significantly with these substrates but not all the evaluated relaxases increased the yield. These studies have helped to gain more insight into the application of relaxases in the field of biotechnology.