Experimental
Biochemical materials and chemical reagentsODN sequences were obtained from a custom synthesis by Sigma Genosys (Sapporo, Japan), and were used as received (Table 1). They include stem-loop-forming sequences, p34s (probe DNA) and c40s (positive control); target DNA, t6G; single-mismatch DNA sequences (negative controls), t6A, t6C, and t6T; loop-complementary DNA (opener), o8. The underlined bases are self-complementary to form an intracatenary double helical structure. The mfold-12 and OligoCalc-softwares 13 predicted the stem-loop structure and Tm, respectively. The s-notation (As, Cs, and Gs) represents a phosphorothioester linkage. An AFM-imaging-based method for single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis is described. A stem-loop-forming 34-mer oligonucleotide (p34s) was designed. P34s contains the complementary sequence for K-ras (5′-GGT GGC-3′, t6G), one of the human oncogenes, at the 5′-end for target-recognition and five successive phosphorothioate linkages in the loop. The functional probe, either alone or hybridized with target DNA (p34s/t6G), relaxed upon treatment with "opener" DNA. The template/target DNA interstrand hybridization product is covalently connected by ligase if the correct target is used, but not hybridized species including mismatches. With these results, developed was a solid-phase SNP assay by transferring an aliquot of the product onto an Au(111) substrate for self-assembly, followed by AFM imaging. Clear contrasts that allow the detection of SNPs, were observed for the ligated and non-ligated species representing the loop-to-linear conformational change. Simple statistical surface-roughness analysis determined the lowest concentration of the sample to be 5 × 10 -10 M, whose necessary sample quantity was 5 fmol.