We studied how oligonucleotides’ terminal ends and nature of present cations influence formation and multimerization of G-quadruplexes to long nanostructures, G-wires. Terminal GC ends in oligonucleotide might promote G-quadruplex multimerization via interlocking and thus formation of longer nanostructures. The effect of the presence of 15NH4+ and K+ ions was studied on G-quadruplexes formed by oligonucleotides d(GCG2AG4AG2) and d(GCG2AG4AG2CG), named GCn and GCnCG. We showed that the presence of 15NH4+ or K+ ions induces multimerization via stacking of 3’-terminal G-quartets in GCn G-quadruplex, which is precluded by 3’-GC ends in the case of GCnCG G-quadruplex. We observed five 15NH4+ions bound in 3’-3’ stacked GCn G-quadruplex multimer, with one located at 3’-3’ stacking interface. 15NH4+ ions bound within 3’-3’ stacked GCn G-quadruplex multimer exhibit slow exchange dynamics. Contrary, presence of 3’-GC ends accelerates exchange ofbound 15NH4+ ions between binding sites in GCnCG G-quadruplex and with 15NH4+ ions in bulk solution. 15NH4+ ions within GCnCG G-quadruplex show unidirectional movement, which is characteristic for ion channels. We showed that in the presence of K+ ions, d(G2AG4AG2) self-assembles into G-wires. By varying solution conditions and sample preparation procedure, we found five G-quadruplex structures, which are formed in d(G2AG4AG2) G-wire self-assembly. Using NMR spectroscopy we determined folding topologies of mentioned five G-quadruplex structures and thus obtained insight into mechanism of G-wire self-assembly on molecular level. Changing the nucleotides in loops enabled us to manipulate G-wires’ properties. MD simulations provided rationale on how nucleotides in loops influence length of formed G-wires. We also studied the possibility of higher-order G-quadruplex structure formation in biological context on oligonucleotide from human telomere region, containing five G-tracts, d(TAG3(T2AG3)4). We showed that the presence of additional G-tract leads to formation of parallel G-quadruplex with 3’-terminal T2AG3 overhang. Multimerization is more likely for parallel than hybrid G-quadruplexes, where lateral loops hinder stacking of terminal G-quartets.
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