DNA substrate preparation for atomic force microscopy studies of protein-DNA interactions

Protein-DNA interactions provide fundamental control mechanisms over biologically essential processes such as DNA replication, transcription, and repair. However, many details of these mechanisms still remain unclear. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) analyses provide unique and important structural and functional information on such protein-DNA interactions at the level of the individual molecules. The high sensitivity of the method with topographical visualization of all sample components also demands for extremely clean and pure materials. Here, we provide an overview of molecular biology-based approaches to produce DNA substrates for AFM imaging as well as other types of experiments, such as optical or magnetic tweezers, that profit from controllable substrate properties in long DNA fragments. We present detailed strategies to produce different types of motifs in DNA that are frequently employed targets of protein interactions. Importantly, the presented preparation techniques imply exact knowledge of the location of the introduced specific target sites within the DNA fragments, allowing for a distinction between specific and non-specific protein-DNA interactions in the AFM images and for separate conformational analyses of the different types of protein-DNA complexes.