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Updated: Oct 16, 2025

Hydrophobic Salt-modified Nafion for Enzyme Immobilization and Stabilization
Published on: July 11, 2012
Modulation of DNAzyme Activity via Butanol Dehydration
Yuqing Li1, Mohamad Zandieh1, Juewen Liu1
1Department of Chemistry, Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada.
Abstract:
Understanding the activity of biomolecules in cosolvent systems is important for catalysis, separation and developing biosensors. The majority of previously studied solvents are either phase separated with water or miscible with water. Butanol was recently used to extract water for the conjugation of DNA to gold nanoparticles. In this work, the effect of butanol on the activity of a few RNA-cleaving DNAzymes was studied. A 130-fold improvement in sensitivity for the Na+ -specific EtNa DNAzyme was observed, and butanol also improved the activity of another Na+ -specific DNAzyme, NaA43T by a few folds. However, when divalent metal ions were used for both EtNa and 17E DNAzymes, the activity was inhibited. A main driven force for enhanced DNAzyme activity is the concentration effect due to butanol dehydration. This study provides insights into the interplay between DNA, metal ions and organic solvents, and such an understanding might be useful for developing sensitive biosensors.
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