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Updated: Jul 4, 2026

Single-molecule Manipulation of G-quadruplexes by Magnetic Tweezers
Published on: September 19, 2017
The structural transition and compaction of human telomeric G-quadruplex induced by excluded volume effect under
Jun Zhou1, Chunying Wei, Guoqing Jia
1State Key Laboratory of Catalysis, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian 116023, China.
Abstract:
The structure polymorphism of human telomeric G-quadruplex (ht-quadruplex) is currently an important topic but remains controversy. Here, we present study of the ht-quadruplex under the cation-deficient but molecular crowding conditions by circular dichroism (CD), microchip electrophoresis (MCE) and UV-melting experiments. Our results show that with concentration increasing of poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG), the structural transition of ht-quadruplex occurs accompanied by structural compaction and enhanced stabilization, which may be caused by excluded volume effect. This work also demonstrates that ht-quadruplex can be well assembled without cations and the structure of ht-quadruplex is actually very complex in vivo.
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