Jinke Wang

Exonuclease III protection assay with FRET probe for detecting DNA-binding proteins

We describe a new method for the assay of sequence-specific DNA-binding proteins in this paper. In this method, the sensitive fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) technology is combined with the common DNA footprinting assay in order to develop a simple, rapid and high-throughput approach for quantitatively detecting the sequence-specific DNA-binding proteins. We named this method as exonuclease III (ExoIII) protection assay with FRET probe. The FRET probe used in this assay was a duplex DNA which was designed to contain one FRET pair in the center and two flanking protein-binding sites. During protein detection, if a target protein exists, it will bind to the two protein-binding sites of the FRET probe and thus protect the FRET pair from ExoIII digestion, resulting in high FRET. However, if the target protein does not exist, the FRET pair on the naked FRET probe will be degraded by ExoIII, resulting in low FRET. Three kinds of recombinant transcription factors including NF-κB, SP1 and p50, and the target protein of NF-κB in HeLa cell nuclear extracts, were successfully detected by the assay. This assay can be extensively used in biomedical research targeted at DNA-binding proteins.

Fabrication of Unimolecular Double-stranded DNA Microarrays on Solid Surfaces for Probing DNA-Protein/Drug Interactions

We present a novel method for fabricating unimolecular double-stranded DNA microarrays on solid surfaces, which were used to probe sequence-specific DNA/protein interactions. For manufacturing the unimolecular double-stranded DNA microarrays, two kinds of special single-stranded oligonucleotides, constant oligonucleotide and target oligonucleotide, were chemically synthesized. The constant oligonucleotides with internal aminated dT were used to capture and immobilize the target oligonucleotides onto the solid surface, and also to provide a primer for later enzymatic extension reactions, while target oligonucleotides took the role of harbouring DNA-binding sites of DNA-binding proteins. The variant target oligonucleotides were annealed and ligated with the constant oligonucleotides to form the new unimolecular oligonucleotides for microspotting. The prepared unimolecular oligonucleotides were microspotted on aldehyde-derivatized glass slides to make partial-dsDNA microarrays. Finally, the partial-dsDNA microarrays were converted into a unimolecular complete-dsDNA microarray by a DNA polymerase extension reaction. The efficiency and accuracy of the polymerase synthesis were demonstrated by the fluorescent-labeled dUTP incorporation in the enzymatic extension reaction and the restriction endonuclease digestion of the fabricated unimolecular complete-dsDNA microarray. The accessibility and specificity of the sequence-specific DNA-binding proteins binding to the immobilized unimolecular dsDNA probes were demonstrated by the binding of Cy3 labeled NF-κB (p50·p50) to the unimolecular dsDNA microarray. This unimolecular dsDNA microarray provides a general technique for high-throughput DNA-protein or DNA-drugs interactions.

Investigation of DNA-protein Sequence-Specific Interactions with a ds-DNA Array

The sequence specific recognitions between DNAs and proteins play important roles in many biological functions. The use of double-stranded DNA arrays (ds-DNA arrays) for studying sequence specific recognition between DNAs and proteins is a promising method. Here we report the use of a ds-DNA probe with multi operation sites of restriction proteins in the middle sequence to investigate DNA-protein sequence-specific interactions including methylation. We arranged EcoR I site and Rsa I site on the same duplex DNA probe to fabricate ds-DNA arrays. We used the ds-DNA arrays to study DNA-restriction enzyme reactions before and after duplex DNA methylation under different probe concentration and reaction time conditions. Our results indicated that the ds-DNA arrays can be further biochemically modified and made accessible for interactions between DNAs and proteins in complex multi-step gene-regulation processes.