Nanomaterials: Hammerheading a New Frontier

摘要

Energy transfer from organic fluorophores to small metal nanoparticles is being used as a molecular beacon tool to monitor the kinetic processes of the hammerhead ribozyme. This marks the first time that nanomaterials have been used to monitor ribozyme kinetics. The quantum efficiency of energy transfer from the fluorophore to the gold nanoparticle follows a distance dependence behavior, which allows the real-time characterization of ribozyme complex structure and cleavage kinetics. The rate of cleavage for our ribozyme at pH=6.5 and 37℃ is measured to be on the order of 10~(-2) min~(-1), which is the correct order of magnitude for similar ribozymes at this pH in the literature.