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Single-molecule Chemistry and Biology Special Feature
SINGLE-MOLECULE CHEMISTRY AND BIOLOGY SPECIAL FEATURE / BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES / RESEARCH ARTICLES / BIOPHYSICS
Fueling protein–DNA interactions inside porous nanocontainers

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*Department of Physics,
Center for Biophysics and Computational Biology,
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801
Edited by Robert J. Silbey, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, and approved April 25, 2007 (received for review December 5, 2006)
| Abstract |
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RecA | single molecule | vesicle encapsulation
Another promising approach for observing molecules for extended periods is to restrict molecules within small unilamellar vesicles (diameter
50–200 nm) that are anchored on the surface (10). Using this scheme, Rhoades et al. (11) were able to measure the equilibrium folding–unfolding fluctuations of single-protein molecules in real time. In contrast to the other immobilization practices, vesicles provide a more native environment for the biological entities, so long as the interaction with the membrane is minimal. In earlier studies, we adopted this vesicle encapsulation technique to test whether the markedly heterogeneous folding and unfolding dynamics of the hairpin ribozyme is intrinsic (12) and to ascertain that the extreme conformational diversity of human telomeric DNA is not caused by surface tethering (13). Although recognized as an "elegant" method, vesicle encapsulation comes with its own caveat (14); the lipid bilayer membrane of the vesicles acts as a barrier for the solutes, making the buffer exchange practically impossible.
Here, we overcome the limitation by making the vesicle porous and explore new avenues that this technique avails for single molecule fluorescence assays.
| Vesicles as Biomimetic Nanocontainers |
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| Porous Vesicles |
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We propose two methods to tackle the permeability issue. The first approach is the use of a bacterial toxin,
-hemolysin (aHL), to introduce
2-nm diameter pores within the vesicle membranes (Scheme 1C). We were indeed able to change the solution conditions inside the vesicles containing aHL pores by flowing in different solutions to the surface-tethered vesicles as reported by the encapsulated RNA molecules by single-molecule fluorescence measurements (B.O., unpublished work). The second and simpler approach comes from a characteristic property of lipid membranes near the melting temperature (Tm) of the phospholipids that gives rise to defects in the lipid packing. Previous ensemble studies used this principle to form porous vesicles for engineering nanoscale bioreactors (16). At room temperature, for dimyristoyl phospatidylcholine [(DMPC) a phospholipid with two acyl chains of 14 carbons] vesicles, the pores were large enough to release ADP through the membrane with a half time of 2 h (16, 17). Although such pores allow the ATP exchange, previous observations suggested that even the smallest DNA oligomer, which is essentially of about twice the size of an ATP molecule, remains encapsulated inside a DMPC vesicle without any substantial leakage over long periods. We have previously reported that the surface-attached DMPC vesicles allowed the exchange of ions at room temperature and used them for single-molecule detection without hindrance to the encapsulated nucleic acid (13).
We would note here that, although the latter approach is much simpler, the aHL method may still prove superior for certain applications: for instance, the transient defects that form within the DMPC membrane are not controllable and depend on the temperature of the assay, whereas in contrast, aHL pores are extremely robust and stable over a wide range of conditions such as pH, temperature, and ionic strength.
Herein, we demonstrate that repeated interactions between the same set of proteins on DNA can be observed inside porous vesicles at the single-molecule level, with the added capability of changing the chemical condition inside the vesicles while keeping the macromolecules within. These measurements provide not only a proof of concept for the resolution of some of the previously discussed issues but also unique mechanistic insights on the RecA filament formation.
| Results and Discussion |
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The vesicles were diluted before being immobilized to the PEG-coated surface (2, 19) through a biotin-neutravidin-biotin linkage (Scheme 2). The polymer coating also serves as a cushion and helps keep the vesicles intact upon surface fixation.
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Upon introduction of our standard reaction buffer|| and 1 mM ATP to the sample chamber containing encapsulated RecA and DNA, ssDNA molecules displayed fluctuations between high and low FRET states (Fig. 1 A and B). The low FRET state (E
0.1) is clearly distinguishable from acceptor blinking or photobleaching, which would show E = 0. The high FRET value (E
0.6) is identical to the FRET values we observed from the DNA-only sample, where the ssDNA was encapsulated under the identical conditions but in the absence of RecA (data not shown). Therefore, the fluctuations are attributed to the assembly (low FRET) and disassembly (high FRET) of RecA filament (19). Because three nucleotides are needed for the binding of a single RecA monomer (22), it is expected that the filament formed on the ssDNA used would consist of at most six monomers. Within the temporal resolution of 100 ms, there was no evidence of a stepwise transition through intermediate FRET states, suggesting that the RecA filament fully dissociates shortly after one RecA monomer dissociates from the ssDNA.** This observation is consistent with previous studies suggesting that the minimum number of RecA monomers required for stable filament formation is about five (19, 23).
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Surprisingly, compared with what is observed with moleculestethered to a surface (19), filament reassembly is much more frequent [on average 973 transitions per DNA per hour, obtained from single exponential fitting of the dwell time histogram of the high FRET state (Fig. 1D)] for the encapsulated ssDNA. This reassembly frequency is two orders of magnitude greater than what could possibly be achieved by merely increasing the protein concentration in surface tethering experiments (average of 10 transitions per DNA per hour for 10 µM RecA) (Fig. 1E). This observation suggests that such drastic improvement in reaction rate is not a result of enhanced local RecA concentration but rather a unique consequence of the confinement aspect of this method. We suspect that this confinement-assisted rate enhancement is related to expected rate enhancement in molecular crowding (in vivo confinement because of the close vicinity of several dissimilar macromolecules) (25–27).
In our case, this higher rebinding rate would be understandable if, upon dissociation, RecA filament remains a polymer for at least several seconds to readily rebind to ssDNA. The dissociated polymer, which would in most cases diffuse away without confinement, inside the vesicle rebinds to the same DNA before falling apart into monomers.
It has long been known that RecA filament forms through a slow nucleation step followed by rapid extension (28–32), and recently the extension of the filament was seen to occur through successive addition of RecA monomers to the DNA-bound filament (19). However, the molecular mechanism of the nucleation of RecA filament was not deducible in previous assays. Because filament reformation is two orders of magnitude faster inside the vesicle, our observation supports a nucleation pathway where the preassembled filament binds ssDNA much more readily than de novo filament nucleation.
It must be emphasized, however, that our study does not address the mechanism of de novo filament formation, for example, whether it requires simultaneous binding of multiple monomers to the DNA or proceeds through binding of preformed oligomers. Rather, our work suggests that once formed, a nucleation cluster can stay assembled even after it dissociates from the DNA. A possible scenario inside the vesicle is that a nucleation cluster forms (N monomers) and stays bound to the DNA until a RecA monomer hydrolyzes an ATP and dissociates from the filament end, and the remaining filament (N–1 monomers) immediately dissociates from the DNA. Because DNA binding is necessary to stimulate RecA's ATPase activity, N–1-sized filament would stay intact in solution and would frequently collide with the DNA until another RecA monomer is added to stabilize the filament again (N monomers). In such a model, the exact number of excess RecA monomers over N would determine how frequently rebinding of the filament occurs, and indeed we have observed heterogeneous rebinding rates among vesicles (SI Fig. 4), possibly because of the probabilistic variation in the number of monomers in each vesicle.
Next, when the solution inside the flow chamber was replaced with a solution containing 1 mM adenosine 5'-O-(3-thiotriphosphate) (ATP
S), a nonhydrolyzable analogue of ATP, the encapsulated molecules showed strictly one low FRET state (Fig. 2 A and B), likely because of increased stability of the filament in the absence of hydrolysis (Scheme 3).
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S inside the chamber, the ssDNA transitioned from a stable low FRET state back to the behavior of fluctuation between high and low FRET states (Fig. 2C), showing that ATP
S in the vesicle is replaced by ATP while keeping the DNA and proteins encapsulated. This response of molecules inside the vesicle to a change in the chemical environment outside the vesicle directly confirms the presence of pores on the vesicle membrane. | Conclusion |
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The vesicle encapsulation method was previously used in single-molecule measurements to study protein folding (11) or complicated dynamics of nucleic acids alone (12, 13), but to our knowledge the detection of multicomponent macromolecular interactions inside vesicles was previously uncharacterized at the single-molecule level. This adaptation of porous vesicles to single-molecule techniques opens room for assays, otherwise unattainable, where a specific number of molecules must be constrained within a small volume, but the chemical condition needs to be changed in a controlled manner. Such assays allow a study of the behavior of the same set of molecules under various solution conditions free of surface tethering. Furthermore, because the volume of the vesicle and the number of encapsulated proteins remain unchanged upon buffer exchange, the local concentration of proteins also remains constant. Because this method recycles the proteins, it eliminates the need for replenishing the molecules each time the chemical condition is changed. The ability of reconditioning the chemical environment while maintaining a high effective protein concentration makes this method an ideal solution for the fluorescence study of weak and transient biological interactions (34). With the control and versatility provided by this porous vesicle encapsulation method, we anticipate immediate applications in single-molecule enzymology, bioengineering, pharmaceutical research, and biological chemistry. We expect this method to be well suited not only for DNA–protein interaction, but also RNA–protein, protein–protein, and other complex enzyme–substrate interactions.
| Materials and Methods |
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For imaging, total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy was used (35). The sample chamber consists of a flow channel assembled from quartz slides and glass coverslips glued by two-sided adhesive tape. To eliminate nonspecific adhesion of vesicles (or nonencapsulated molecules) to the chamber and to facilitate the specific binding of biotinylated vesicles, the surfaces of the chamber were coated with a mixture of PEG and biotinylated PEG
(2, 19). The surface-immobilized vesicles remained stable for several hours even after multiple washing cycles. To increase the photostability of the fluorescent dyes, imaging Buffer A was made to contain 1 mg/ml glucose oxidase, 0.04 mg/ml catalase, 1% (vol/vol) 2-mercaptoethanol, and 0.4% glucose and injected to the flow chamber.
The imaging was conducted at room temperature (23 ± 1°C), and the observation period varied between 2 and 5 min until most molecules photobleached. Vesicles with no ssDNA have no fluorescence and are therefore not detected. Among the vesicles showing both donor and acceptor signals, 57% showed multistep photobleaching likely because of several encapsulated ssDNA, 20% showed constantly high FRET states with no stable low FRET states and likely because of vesicles containing less than the minimum number of RecA monomers required for nucleation, and
23% showed multiple transitions between high- and low-FRET states as well as evidence for single ssDNA in the form of single-step photobleaching. Only this last class of vesicles with traces consistent with one labeled ssDNA and with enough RecA for filament formation is chosen for analysis.
| Acknowledgements |
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| Footnotes |
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Abbreviations: DMPC, dimyristoyl phospatidylcholine; aHL,
-hemolysin; ATP
S, adenosine 5'-O-(3-thiotriphosphate).
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: tjha{at}uiuc.edu
Author contributions: I.C., B.O., C.J., and T.H. designed research; I.C., B.O., and C.J. performed research; I.C., B.O., and C.J. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; I.C., B.O., C.J., and T.H. analyzed data; and I.C., B.O., C.J., and T.H. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0610673104/DC1.
¶ The interior volume of a 100-nm diameter vesicle is
0.5 attoliters, and the effective concentration of one molecule within that volume is
3 µM. ![]()
|| Buffer A is composed of 1 mM 2-mercaptoethanol, 10 mM Mg(CH3COO)2, 100 mM Na(CH3COO), 25 mM Tris·CH3COOH (pH 7.5), and 1 mM ATP. To increase the photostability of the fluorescent molecules, we include 1 mg/ml glucose oxidase/0.04 mg/ml catalase/1% (v/v) 2-mercaptoethanol/0.4% glucose. ![]()
** Monomeric dissociation, should it occur, would be detected in the 100-ms resolution. ![]()

When the PEG surface was not covered with neutravidin, essentially no binding was observed. In sharp contrast, even a lower dilution of the sample yielded a good coverage on the surface after neutravidin treatment. The binding was therefore specific to only the biotinylated molecules, which would be the vesicles. ![]()
© 2007 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA
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