Yizhou Li's group has made important progress in the G-quadruplex conformation analysis and small molecule screening of miR-92a
In March 2020, Yizhou Li's group published a research paper entitled ‘Exploration of the formation and structure characteristics of a miR-92a promoter G-quadruplex by ESI-MS and CD’ in Talanta.
G-quadruplex is a specific secondary structure of guanine-rich nucleic acid sequences. G-quadruplex in miRNA undergo structural changes in a variety of physiological processes, affecting their biological functions and leading to the occurrence of major diseases such as breast cancer and rectal cancer. Since the conformation of G-quadruplex is significantly different from that of ds-DNA, it can be used as a new type of target to screen small molecules with selective recognition function and regulate biological function by changing the structure of G-quadruplex, providing a new idea for the treatment of cancer-related diseases. Therefore, G-quadruplex in miRNA have become an important therapeutic target for diseases. The method of regulating the function of related genes by targeting the G-quadruplex structure of miRNA sequence has become a new strategy to study the treatment of cancer and other diseases.
Li Yizhou's group screened for small molecules of flavopiridol that specifically bind to this G-quadruplex. The results showed that flavopiridol promoted and stabilized the formation of G-quadruplex dimerization structure of miR-92a promoter sequence and stabilized the G-quadruplex structure of mutant sequence The results of this study provide guidance for future screening of small ligand molecules with high affinity to miRNA sequence G-quadruplex structure.
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21572016, 21976005, 21907011), 973 Program (2012CB720600, 2012CB720601), Project No. 2019CDQYYX018 supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Chongqing Research and Frontier Technology (cstc2018jcyjAX0517).
View Article Online: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.talanta.2019.120708
