Lighting Up of Thiazole Orange on G-Quadruplex DNA by High Pressure

Abstract

Pressure is the physical perturbation on molecules that induces volumetric decrease of the system. Biomolecules such as nucleic acids can change their structures under high pressure, which shows a different behavior from that seen at atmospheric pressure. In this study, pressure control of fluorescence emission of thiazole orange (TO) on human telomeric G-quadruplex DNA (h-telo) has been demonstrated to develop a novel DNA nanotechnology. The fluorescence intensity of TO with h-telo can be significantly increased by the application of pressure up to 200 MPa, which indicated that excited state of TO was more favored than that at the atmospheric pressure on the G-quadruplex DNA. This unique property enabled a novel technique for developing a new logic gate system using pressure changes.