Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access originally published online on October 2, 2007
Nucleic Acids Research 2007 35(22):7429-7455; doi:10.1093/nar/gkm711
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Nucleic Acids Research, 2007, Vol. 35, No. 22 7429-7455
© 2007 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Human telomere, oncogenic promoter and 5'-UTR G-quadruplexes: diverse higher order DNA and RNA targets for cancer therapeutics
1Structural Biology Program, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10021, USA and 2Division of Physics and Applied Physics, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +1 212 639 7207; Fax: +1 212 717 3066; Email: pateld{at}mskcc.org
Received July 25, 2007. Revised August 24, 2007. Accepted August 27, 2007.
Guanine-rich DNA sequences can form G-quadruplexes stabilized by stacked G–G–G–G tetrads in monovalent cation-containing solution. The length and number of individual G-tracts and the length and sequence context of linker residues define the diverse topologies adopted by G-quadruplexes. The review highlights recent solution NMR-based G-quadruplex structures formed by the four-repeat human telomere in K+ solution and the guanine-rich strands of c-myc, c-kit and variant bcl-2 oncogenic promoters, as well as a bimolecular G-quadruplex that targets HIV-1 integrase. Such structure determinations have helped to identify unanticipated scaffolds such as interlocked G-quadruplexes, as well as novel topologies represented by double-chain-reversal and V-shaped loops, triads, mixed tetrads, adenine-mediated pentads and hexads and snap-back G-tetrad alignments. The review also highlights the recent identification of guanine-rich sequences positioned adjacent to translation start sites in 5'-untranslated regions (5'-UTRs) of RNA oncogenic sequences. The activity of the enzyme telomerase, which maintains telomere length, can be negatively regulated through G-quadruplex formation at telomeric ends. The review evaluates progress related to ongoing efforts to identify small molecule drugs that bind and stabilize distinct G-quadruplex scaffolds associated with telomeric and oncogenic sequences, and outlines progress towards identifying recognition principles based on several X-ray-based structures of ligand–G-quadruplex complexes.
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