Use of plasmon coupling to reveal the dynamics of DNA bending and cleavage by single EcoRV restriction enzymes.

ABSTRACT: Pairs of Au nanoparticles have recently been proposed as "plasmon rulers" based on the dependence of their light scattering on the interparticle distance. Preliminary work has suggested that plasmon rulers can be used to measure and monitor dynamic distance changes over the 1- to 100-nm length scale in biology. Here, we substantiate that plasmon rulers can be used to measure dynamical biophysical processes by applying the ruler to a system that has been investigated extensively by using ensemble kinetic measurements: the cleavage of DNA by the restriction enzyme EcoRV. Temporal resolutions of up to 240 Hz were obtained, and the end-to-end extension of up to 1,000 individual dsDNA enzyme substrates could be simultaneously monitored for hours. The kinetic parameters extracted from our single

SUBMITTER: Reinhard BM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1815239 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature