Hydrogels Utilizing G-Quadruplexes

Abstract

Among recently reported unique and interesting hydrogel systems utilizing DNA as a component, those employing G-quadruplexes are particularly emerging. Their design principles and achieved functions are briefly reviewed.

Supramolecular DNA-Based Catalysis in Organic Solvents

“…1 The unique potential of G-rich DNA strands to undergo self-assembly through Hoogsteen hydrogen bonding resulting in polymorphic tetrahelical structures [2][3][4] has led to their widespread implementation in the fabrication of several DNA-based systems including switches [5][6][7] and hydrogels. 8 Furthermore, the seminal discovery by Sen et al unveiling the peroxidase-like activity of G-quadruplex-hemin complex (G4-h) 9 has immensely contributed toward various biosensing and bioanalytical applications. 10,11 This peroxidase-mimicking potential of G4-h has recently been employed for achieving localized polymerization of dopamine on the surface of DNA origami.…”

Application of DNA Quadruplex Hydrogels Prepared from Polyethylene Glycol-Oligodeoxynucleotide Conjugates to Cell Culture Media

“…DNA is one of the well-studied components used to prepare hydrogels [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11], because of its sophisticated functions as a fruit of previous studies in DNA computing and structural DNA nanotechnology [12,13]. Not only regular duplexes [4], but also four-stranded structures called “G-quadruplex” and “i-motif” are often used to construct DNA hydrogels due to their attractive features: metal ion or pH responsiveness [14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24]. We have recently developed a new class of hydrogels utilizing such DNA quadruplexes as cross-linking points of the 3D polymer network [25,26,27].…”