Rapid renaturation of complementary DNA strands mediated by cationic detergents: a role for high-probability binding domains in enhancing the kinetics of molecular assembly processes.

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The rate of renaturation for complementary DNA strands can be enhanced greater than 10(4)-fold by the addition of simple cationic detergents, and the reaction is qualitatively and quantitatively very similar to that found with purified heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein A1 protein. Under optimal conditions, renaturation rates are greater than 2000-fold faster than reactions run in 1 M NaCl at 68 degrees C. The reaction is second-order with respect to DNA concentration, and reaction rates approach or equal the rate with which complementary strands are expected to encounter each other in solution. Renaturation can even be observed well above the expected melting temperature of the duplex DNA, demonstrating that some cationic detergents have DNA double-helix-stabilizing properties. The reaction is also extremely rapid in the presence of up to a 10(6)-fold excess of noncomplementary sequences, establishing that renaturation is specific and relatively independent of heterologous DNA. This finding also implies that up to several thousand potential target sequences can be sampled per strand per second. Such reagents may be useful for procedures that require rapid nucleic acid renaturation, and these results suggest ways to identify and design other compounds that increase the kinetics of association reactions. Moreover, this work provides further support for a model relating the existence of flexible, weakly interacting, repeating domains to their function in rapid molecular assembly processes in vitro and in vivo.

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