Journal Article

Temperature and pressure limits of guanosine monophosphate self-assemblies

Berghaus, Melanie, Arns, Loana, Harish, Balasubramanian, Royer, Catherine A., Seymen, Rana, McCallum, Scott A., Gao, Mimi, Winter, Roland

2017

Overview

Guanosine monophosphate, among the nucleotides, has the unique property to self-associate and form nanoscale cylinders consisting of hydrogen-bonded G-quartet disks, which are stacked on top of one another. Such self-assemblies describe not only the basic structural motif of G-quadruplexes formed by, e.g., telomeric DNA sequences, but are also interesting targets for supramolecular chemistry and nanotechnology. The G-quartet stacks serve as an excellent model to understand the fundamentals of their molecular self-association and to unveil their application spectrum. However, the thermodynamic stability of such self-assemblies over an extended temperature and pressure range is largely unexplored. Here, we report a combined FTIR and NMR study on the temperature and pressure stability of G-quartet stacks formed by disodium guanosine 5′-monophosphate (Na 2 5′-GMP). We found that under abyssal conditions, where temperatures as low as 5 °C and pressures up to 1 kbar are reached, the self-association of Na 2 5′-GMP is most favoured. Beyond those conditions, the G-quartet stacks dissociate laterally into monomer stacks without significantly changing the longitudinal dimension. Among the tested alkali cations, K + is the most efficient one to elevate the temperature as well as the pressure limits of GMP self-assembly.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group
• Subject: 101/6 / 631/57/2272/2276 / 639/638/440/56 / Cations / Guanosine / Humanities and Social Sciences / multidisciplinary / Nanotechnology / Nucleotide sequence / Nucleotides / Pressure / Science / Science (multidisciplinary) / Self-assembly / Self-association / Temperature / Temperature effects