| Research Abstract |
DNA is regarded as a strongly correlated soft material from a viewpoint of polymer chemistry, as its structure is dictated by many cooperative interactions such as hydrogen bonding, pi-pi stacking of aromatic rings, and electrostatic forces. A new material may be developed successfully using these characteristics of DNA. Alternatively, DNA itself may be utilized aiming at developing a DNA synthesizing technology. So far, we stand in the latter position and have been studying materials containing biochemically useful reagents. Here, we discuss a new reagent by using DNA tetraplex formationwhich is one form of complex structures of DNA. 1)Potassium sensing oligonucleotide, PSO Several metal ions have an important role in living organism. Potassium ion is connected with regulation of other metal ions and some diseases and is attracted in the medical area. So far several reagents were studied in this point, but they have insufficient water-solubility and specificity. In this paper, we firstly succeeded the water-soluble sensing reagent for a potassium ion, which showed the very high specificity for potassium ion over sodium one. 2)Tetrakis-acridiny peptide (TAP) as a potential telomerase inhibitor Some of the cancers are believed to be derived from enhanced activity of telomerase, which catalyzes the extension of telomere DNA termini. Since telomerase cannot bind to a G-quartet structure, compounds which can stabilize such a DNA structure are good candidate for telomerase inhibitor. We tested inhibition ability of TAP, which interacts with DNA, for telomerase. TAP had remarkable stabilization power of a G-quartet structure and hence is promising as a novel telomerase inhibitor.
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