Microplastics can adsorb and spread a variety of pollutants in the ecosystem posing threat to human health. One common pollution sources environmental waters is metal ions, which not only on microplastics but also promote adsorption other invasive species such as DNA. Recently, we showed that environmentally abundant ions (Na+, Mg2+ Ca2+) single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) onto microplastics. Herein, ...

DNA extracted from herbarium specimens is highly fragmented; therefore, it is crucial to use extraction protocols that retrieve short DNA molecules. Improvements in extraction and DNA library preparation protocols for animal remains have allowed efficient retrieval of molecules shorter than 50 bp. Here, we applied these improvements to DNA extraction protocols for herbarium specimens and evalua...

Replicating single-stranded DNA is preferentially assembled into chromatin in Xenopus egg extracts relative to non-replicating double-stranded DNA. We have examined the molecular basis of this phenomenon. Single-stranded DNA itself is not a favored template for nucleosome assembly in comparison to double-stranded DNA. Complementary strand synthesis is required for the rapid assembly of nucleoso...

Nanopore sequencing has the potential to become a direct, fast, and inexpensive DNA sequencing technology. The simplest form of nanopore DNA sequencing utilizes the hypothesis that individual nucleotides of single-stranded DNA passing through a nanopore will uniquely modulate an ionic current flowing through the pore, allowing the record of the current to yield the DNA sequence. We demonstrate ...

Protein-mediated self-assembly is arguably one of the most promising routes for building complex molecular nanostructures. Here, we report a molecular self-assembly technique that allows programmable, site-specific patterning of double-stranded DNA scaffolds, at a single-base resolution, by 3-nm-long RecA-based nucleoprotein filaments. RecA proteins bind to single-stranded DNA to form nucleopro...

SMARCAL1 (also known as HARP) is a SWI/SNF family protein with an ATPase activity stimulated by DNA containing both single-stranded and double-stranded regions. Mutations in SMARCAL1 are associated with the disease Schimke immuno-osseous dysplasia, a multisystem autosomal recessive disorder characterized by T cell immunodeficiency, growth inhibition, and renal dysfunction. The cellular function...

Meeting the increasing food and energy demands of a growing population will require the development of ground-breaking strategies that promote sustainable plant production. Host-induced gene silencing has shown great potential for controlling pest and diseases in crop plants. However, while delivery of inhibitory noncoding double-stranded (ds)RNA by transgenic expression is a promising concept,...

The enzyme Dicer produces small silencing RNAs such as micro-RNAs (miRNAs) and small interfering RNAs (siRNAs). In Drosophila, Dicer-1 produces ∼22-24-nt miRNAs from pre-miRNAs, whereas Dicer-2 makes 21-nt siRNAs from long double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs). How Dicer-2 precisely makes 21-nt siRNAs with a remarkably high fidelity is unknown. Here we report that recognition of the 5'-monophosphate of...

Topological properties of a double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) proximity-coupled by an s-wave superconductor are investigated, in which the energy spectra and differential conductance calculated within framework tight-binding approximation. Our results indicate that this dsDNA-superconductor system hosts Majorana zero modes (MZMs) when Zeeman field is perpendicular to helix axis, whereas no MZM could ...