Pulsed Dipolar EPR for Self-Limited Complexes of Oligonucleotides Studies

Pulsed electron-electron double resonance (PELDOR) spectroscopy is a powerful method for determining nucleic acid (NA) structure and conformational dynamics. PELDOR with molecular dynamics (MD) simulations opens up unique possibilities for defining the conformational ensembles of flexible, three-dimensional, self-assembled complexes of NA. Understanding the diversity and structure of these complexes is vital for uncovering matrix and regulative biological processes in the human body and artificially influencing them for therapeutic purposes. To explore the reliability of PELDOR and MD simulations, we site-specifically attached nitroxide spin labels to oligonucleotides, which form self-assembled complexes between NA chains and exhibit significant conformational flexibility. The DNA complexes assembled from a pair of oligonucleotides with different linker sizes showed excellent agreement between the distance distributions obtained from PELDOR and calculated from MD simulations, both for the mean inter-spin distance and the distance distribution width. These results prove that PELDOR with MD simulations has significant potential for studying the structure and dynamics of conformational flexible complexes of NA.