Wednesday, 09 May, 2012
Functional Assembly of Aptamer Binding Sites by Single-Molecule Cut-and-Paste
M. Strackharn, S. W. Stahl, E. M. Puchner, and H. E. Gaub -
Nano Lett., Vol. 12 (5), pp. 2425-2428 (2012)
Bottom up assembly of functional molecular ensembles with novel properties emerging from composition and arrangement of its constituents is a prime goal of nanotechnology. By single-molecule cut-and-paste we assembled binding sites for malachite green in a molecule-by-molecule assembly process from the two halves of a split aptamer. We show that only a perfectly joined binding site immobilizes the fluorophore and enhances the fluorescence quantum yield by several orders of magnitude. To corroborate the robustness of this approach we produced a micrometer-sized structure consisting of more than 500 reconstituted binding sites. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of one by one bottom up functional biomolecular assembly.