Electrochemical sensing telomere-bending motions caused by hTRF1

It has been reported that human telomeric repeat binding factor 1 (hTRF1) may cause telomeric DNA bent; however there is no direct evidence, thus controversy still exists. In this work, the interaction between hTRF1 and a simulated telomeric DNA was investigated by using electrochemical method. While the telomeric DNA was immobilized on a gold electrode surface, a guanine-quadruplex–hemin complex was linked at the end of the DNA to serve as an electrochemical signal reporter. If hTRF1 made the telomeric tracts bent, electrochemical response from “off” to “on” could be observed. Therefore, this electrochemical method could give direct evidence whether hTRF1 binding to telomeric DNA would induce a shallow distortion of the DNA molecules, and a new way to explore the structural information of telomere was also proposed in this paper.