Single-molecule chemical denaturation of riboswitches
Abstract
To date, single-molecule RNA science has been developed almost exclusively around the effect of metal ions as folding promoters and stabilizers of the RNA structure. Here, we introduce a novel strategy that combines single-molecule Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) and chemical denaturation to observe and manipulate RNA dynamics. We demonstrate that the competing interplay between metal ions and denaturant agents provides a platform to extract information that otherwise will remain hidden with current methods. Using the adenine-sensing riboswitch aptamer as a model, we provide strong evidence for a rate-limiting folding step of the aptamer domain being modulated through ligand binding, a feature that is important for regulation of the controlled gene. In the absence of ligand, the rate-determining step is dominated by the formation of long-range key tertiary contacts between peripheral stem-loop elements. In contrast, when the adenine ligand interacts with partially folded messenger RNAs, the aptamer requires specifically bound Mg2+ ions, as those observed in the crystal structure, to progress further towards the native form. Moreover, despite that the ligand-free and ligand-bound states are indistinguishable by FRET, their different stability against urea-induced denaturation allowed us to discriminate them, even when they coexist within a single FRET trajectory; a feature not accessible by existing methods.
Citation
Dalgarno , P A , Bordello , J , Morris , R , St-Pierre , P , Dubé , A , Samuel , I D W , Lafontaine , D & Penedo , C 2013 , ' Single-molecule chemical denaturation of riboswitches ' , Nucleic Acids Research , vol. 41 , no. 7 , pp. 4253-4265 . https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkt128
Publication
Nucleic Acids Research
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0305-1048Type
Journal article
Rights
© The Author(s) 2013. Published by Oxford University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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