The purpose of this blog is initially to train myself in the craft of blogging and eventually to make this blog a useful discussion forum for researchers, teachers and students interested in the field of G-quadruplexes. In a nutshell, G-quadruplexes are supramolecular structures formed by the self-assembly of guanine bases. More specifically it consists of planar tetramers of guanine known as tetrads, which in turn stack (usually aided by cation binding) to form higher order structures (view a picture in the previous post). G-quadruplexes are formed by individual guanines (base, nucleoside, nucleotide) or by oligomeric guanines (G-rich oligonucleotides of DNA, RNA or even non-natural PNA). Research in the field of G-quadruplex in the last 10 years has increased dramatically due to its potential implications in diseases such as cancer as well as their use in nanotechnology applications.
My research laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus deals primarily with the synthesis of guanine derivatives and studies of its supramolecular properties. We are currently using such guanine derivatives as scaffolds to construct nanostructures and also to bind to Quadruplex-DNA (QDNA) for medicinal chemistry purposes.
To be continued...
Thursday, January 18, 2007
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