Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 5: Posters: Biopolymers and Biomaterials

BP 5.22: Poster

Monday, March 22, 2010, 17:15–20:00, Poster B1

Single molecule force measurements of single-stranded RNA-molecules with optical tweezers — •Tanja Plötz¹, Fabian Eber², Anna Müller², Christina Wege², Andy Sischka¹, and Dario Anselmetti¹ — ¹Experimental Biophysics and Applied Nanoscience, Faculty of Physics, Bielefeld University — ²Department of Molecular Biology and Plant Virology, Institute of Biology, Stuttgart University

The formation of RNA secondary structures is fundamental for systems biology, because of their regulatory functions on different levels. For understanding protein interactions with single-stranded RNA secondary structures it is of special interest to gain quantitative insights into the binding mechanisms and the interplay at the single molecule scale.
Therefore, we investigated the force extension curves of single-stranded RNA for the breakup of secondary structure, in experiments using a compact single beam optical tweezers platform [1,2] with a custom-made hybridization chamber.
We will expand our experiments to investigate protein-RNA interactions in the Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) ssRNA genome with viral coat protein subunits, in order to find out whether initiation of the self-assembly of the TMV nucleoprotein tube strictly depends on protein-RNA interaction at hairpin loop structures located within the RNA’s origin of assembly.
A. Sischka et al., Rev. Sci. Instrum. 74, 4827, 2003
A. Sischka et al., Rev. Sci. Instrum. 79, 063702, 2008