Thermodynamic Characterization of Nucleic Acid Nanoparticles Hybridization by UV Melting

The advances in nucleic acid nanotechnology have given rise to various elegantly designed structural complexes fabricated from DNA, RNA, chemically modified RNA strands, and their mixtures. The structural properties of NA nanoparticles (NANP) generally dictate and significantly impact biological function; and thus, it is critical to extract information regarding relative stabilities of the different structural forms. The adequate stability assessment requires knowledge of thermodynamic parameters that can be empirically derived using conventional UV-melting technique. The focus of this chapter is to describe methodology to evaluate thermodynamic data of NANPs complexation based on DNA 12 base-pair (bp) duplex formation as an example.