A versatile platform for single-molecule enzymology of restriction endonuclease

Abstract

Enzymes are the major players for many biological processes. Fundamental studies of the enzymatic activity at the single-molecule level provides important information that is otherwise inaccessible at the ensemble level. Yet, these single-molecule experiments are technically difficult and generally require complicated experimental design. Here, we develop a Holliday junction (HJ)-based platform to study the activity of restriction endonucleases at the single-molecule level using single-molecule FRET (sm-FRET). We show that the intrinsic dynamics of HJ can be used as the reporter for both the enzyme-binding and the substrate-release events. Thanks to the multiple-arms structure of HJ, the fluorophore-labeled arms can be different from the surface anchoring arm and the substrate arm. Therefore, it is possible to independently change the substrate arm to study different enzymes with similar functions. Such a design is extremely useful for the systematic study of enzymes from the same family or enzymes bearing different pathologic mutations. Moreover, this method can be easily extended to study other types of DNA-binding enzymes without too much modification of the design. We anticipate it can find broad applications in single-molecule enzymology.