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Interaction of nucleic acids with carbon nanotubes and dendrimers

Nandy, Bidisha and Santosh, Mogurampelly and Maiti, Prabal K (2012) Interaction of nucleic acids with carbon nanotubes and dendrimers. In: JOURNAL OF BIOSCIENCES, 37 (3). pp. 457-474.

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12038-012-9220-8

Abstract

Nucleic acid interaction with nanoscale objects like carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and dendrimers is of fundamental interest because of their potential application in CNT separation, gene therapy and antisense therapy. Combining nucleic acids with CNTs and dendrimers also opens the door towards controllable self-assembly to generate various supra-molecular and nano-structures with desired morphologies. The interaction between these nanoscale objects also serve as a model system for studying DNA compaction, which is a fundamental process in chromatin organization. By using fully atomistic simulations, here we report various aspects of the interactions and binding modes of DNA and small interfering RNA (siRNA) with CNTs, graphene and dendrimers. Our results give a microscopic picture and mechanism of the adsorption of single- and double-strand DNA (ssDNA and dsDNA) on CNT and graphene. The nucleic acid-CNT interaction is dominated by the dispersive van der Waals (vdW) interaction. In contrast, the complexation of DNA (both ssDNA and dsDNA) and siRNA with various generations of poly-amido-amine (PAMAM) dendrimers is governed by electrostatic interactions. Our results reveal that both the DNA and siRNA form stable complex with the PAMAM dendrimer at a physiological pH when the dendrimer is positively charged due to the protonation of the primary amines. The size and binding energy of the complex increase with increase in dendrimer generation. We also give a summary of the current status in these fields and discuss future prospects.

Item Type: Journal Article
Publication: JOURNAL OF BIOSCIENCES
Publisher: INDIAN ACAD SCIENCES
Additional Information: Copyright for this article belongs to the Indian Academy of Sciences
Keywords: Binding and MD simulations;carbon nanotube;dendrimer; graphene;nucleic acids;van der Waals interaction
Department/Centre: Division of Physical & Mathematical Sciences > Physics
Date Deposited: 27 Aug 2012 04:50
Last Modified: 27 Aug 2012 04:50
URI: http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/44981

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