Amphiphiles Formed from Synthetic DNA-Nanomotifs Mimic the Stepwise Dispersal of Transcriptional Clusters in the Cell Nucleus

Tschurikow X, Gadzekpo A, Tran MP, Chatterjee R, Sobucki M, Zaburdaev V, Göpfrich K, Hilbert L (2023)

Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2023

Journal

Nano Letters American Chemical Society

DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c01301

Abstract

Stem cells exhibit prominent clusters controlling the transcription of genes into RNA. These clusters form by a phase-separation mechanism, and their size and shape are controlled via an amphiphilic effect of transcribed genes. Here, we construct amphiphile-nanomotifs purely from DNA, and we achieve similar size and shape control for phase-separated droplets formed from fully synthetic, self-interacting DNA-nanomotifs. Increasing amphiphile concentrations induce rounding of droplets, prevent droplet fusion, and, at high concentrations, cause full dispersal of droplets. Super-resolution microscopy data obtained from zebrafish embryo stem cells reveal a comparable transition for transcriptional clusters with increasing transcription levels. Brownian dynamics and lattice simulations further confirm that the addition of amphiphilic particles is sufficient to explain the observed changes in shape and size. Our work reproduces key aspects of transcriptional cluster formation in biological cells using relatively simple DNA sequence-programmable nanostructures, opening novel ways to control the mesoscopic organization of synthetic nanomaterials.

Involved external institutions

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) DE Germany (DE) Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg DE Germany (DE) Max-Planck-Institut für die Physik des Lichts (MPL) / Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light DE Germany (DE)

How to cite

APA:

Tschurikow, X., Gadzekpo, A., Tran, M.P., Chatterjee, R., Sobucki, M., Zaburdaev, V.,... Hilbert, L. (2023). Amphiphiles Formed from Synthetic DNA-Nanomotifs Mimic the Stepwise Dispersal of Transcriptional Clusters in the Cell Nucleus. Nano Letters. https://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c01301

MLA:

Tschurikow, Xenia, et al. "Amphiphiles Formed from Synthetic DNA-Nanomotifs Mimic the Stepwise Dispersal of Transcriptional Clusters in the Cell Nucleus." Nano Letters (2023).

BibTeX: Download