title: Self-assembled DNA crystals: the impact on resolution of 5'-phosphates and the DNA source.
abstract: Designed self-assembled DNA crystals consist of rigid DNA motifs that are held together by cohesive sticky-ended interactions. A prominent application of such systems is that they might be able to act as macromolecular hosts for macromolecular guests, thereby alleviating the crystallization problem of structural biology. We have recently demonstrated that it is indeed possible to design and construct such crystals and to determine their structures by X-ray diffraction procedures. To act as useful hosts that organize biological macromolecules for crystallographic purposes, maximizing the resolution of the crystals will maximize the utility of the approach. The structures reported so far have diffracted only to about 4 Å, so we have examined two factors that might have impact on the resolution. We find no difference in the resolution whether the DNA is synthetic or PCR-generated. However, we find that the presence of a phosphate on the 5'-end of the strands improves the resolution of the crystals markedly.
authors: Department of Chemistry, New York University, New York, New York 10003, USA.
authors: Ruojie
authors: R
authors: Sha
authors: Jens J
authors: JJ
authors: Birktoft
authors: Nam
authors: N
authors: Nguyen
authors: Arun Richard
authors: AR
authors: Chandrasekaran
authors: Jianping
authors: J
authors: Zheng
authors: Xinshuai
authors: X
authors: Zhao
authors: Chengde
authors: C
authors: Mao
authors: Nadrian C
authors: NC
authors: Seeman
mesh_terms: D018360:Crystallography, X-Ray; D004247:DNA / Q000138:chemical synthesis / Q000737:chemistry*; D008958:Models, Molecular; D053758:Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry*; D010710:Phosphates / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D010710:Phosphates; D004247:DNA