The structural studies of human telomeric DNA using AFM.

Abstract

Recently, we reported a unique topology of the mixed parallel/antiparallel structure in K(+) solution. Taking into account the length of the 3'-terminal single-stranded human telomeric DNA (100-200 bases), the oligomerization of individual quadruplexes can be simply performed by inserting a TTA linker to each 22 nt structure. To test the hypothesis, we used AFM imaging technique to investigate the structural characteristics of long human telomeric DNA. We found that the long single-stranded human telomeric DNA can form a higher-order packing DNA structure. This may provide important information for understanding telomere structure and the development of telomere G-quadruplex-binding molecules as telomerase inhibitors.