Restriction enzymes cleave DNA immobilized on micron-sized diamond crystallites

• Complementary DNA strands can interact even if they are bound to different diamonds.
• Diamond-immobilized DNA can be cleaved by sequence-specific restriction enzymes.
• The cleavage requires physical proximity between crystallites, as confirmed by TEM.
• Length of DNA separating the site from the surface determines the cleavage rate.
• Residual hydrophobic surface of diamond does not inactivate the restriction enzymes.

Because diamonds have strongly bonded networks of carbon atoms, they offer the potential to support DNA-targeted analysis in architectures that require very stable DNA immobilization with very low DNA leakage. Further, their non-porous structures should allow diamond-immobilized DNA to easily gain access to enzymes in bulk solution. As part of our work to develop a molecular biology tool kit to transform immobilized DNA, we asked whether diamond-immobilized DNA could be cleaved by sequence-specific restriction endonucleases, despite the large sizes of those enzymes, the potential for “steric” obstruction from the diamond surface, and the possibility that the diamond surface might inactivate those enzymes. We report here that both standard and “nicking” restriction endonucleases cut diamond-immobilized single-stranded DNA, after it forms a duplex with a complementary strand of DNA delivered from solution. As a somewhat surprising result, we also discovered that restriction enzymes could cleave a fraction of the immobilized duplex DNA even if the complementary strand came not from solution, but rather from a separate diamond crystallite. This cleavage did not result from a failure of the attachment linkage that allowed the diffusion of leaked DNA through bulk solvent. Rather, the cleavage required physical proximity between crystallites, as confirmed by transmission electron microscopy. These results add to the tools that can use diamond-immobilized DNA, as well as define practical constraints on assay architectures where diamond-immobilized DNA is presumed to be isolated from other diamond-immobilized DNA particles.

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