Reduced Graphene Oxide-Oligonucleotide Interfaces: Understanding Based on Electrochemical Oxidation of Guanines

Investigation into the interactions between biomolecules DNA/RNA and carbon nanomaterials is very important for applications in bioassays and bioanalysis. Graphene and graphene oxide (GO) have been successfully adopted by exploiting the binding affinity difference between single-stranded oligonucleotides (ssDNA) and double-stranded oligonucleotides (dsDNA) to graphene sheets. In this work, we describe the electrochemical DNA oxidation with [Ru(bpy)₃]²⁺ to understand the interaction between dsDNA (and corresponding ssDNA) and reduced graphene oxide (rGO). The electrochemical oxidation rate of guanine bases of ssDNA bound to rGO by electrochemically generated [Ru(bpy)₃]³⁺ was much slower than those unbound to rGO. Our study revealed that ssDNA constrained on rGO was significantly protected from the electron transfer to [Ru(bpy)₃]³⁺ because of π,π-stacking interaction between nucleobases and rGO. On the other hand, the oxidation rates of 11-, 20-, and 27-mer dsDNA bound to rGO increased relative to those of dsDNA alone, demonstrating that the guanine bases of dsDNA on the interaction with rGO became more accessible to [Ru(bpy)₃]³⁺. Our electrochemical data illustrated that dsDNA could be totally or partially dehybridized and bind to rGO to form ssDNA/rGO. Furthermore, absorption, circular dichroism spectra, and fluorescence measurements of ethidium bromide using ssDNA and dsDNA with rGO supported the dehybridization of dsDNA in the presence of rGO.