Ultrafast microfluidic mixer for tracking the early folding kinetics of human telomere G-quadruplex.
The folding of G-quadruplex is hypothesized to undergo a complex process, from the formation of a hairpin structure to a triplex intermediate and to the final G-quadruplex. Currently, no experimental evidence has been found for the hairpin formation, because it folds in the time regime of 10-100 μs, entailing the development of microfluidic mixers with a mixing time of less than 10 μs. In this paper, we reported an ultrarapid micromixer with a mixing time of 5.5 μs, which represents the fastest turbulent micromixer to our best knowledge. Evaluations of the micromixer were conducted to confirm its mixing efficiency for small molecules and macromolecules. This new micromixer enabled us to interrogate the hairpin formation in the early folding process of human telomere G-quadruplex. The experimental kinetic evidence for the formation of hairpin was obtained for the first time.
Britton Chance Center for Biomedical Photonics at Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics - Hubei Bioinformatics & Molecular Imaging Key Laboratory, Systems Biology Theme, Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology , Wuhan 430074, China.
Ying
Y
Li
Chao
C
Liu
Xiaojun
X
Feng
Youzhi
Y
Xu
Bi-Feng
BF
Liu
D054856:G-Quadruplexes; D006801:Humans; D007700:Kinetics; D044085:Microfluidics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D016615:Telomere