Category

Poster - Theoretical Proposal

Description

DRAQ5 is a synthetic fluorescent dye. Most commonly it is used to tag double stranded DNA. Since the dye is able to permeate the cell membrane, it often binds to the nucleus of the cell. This makes the dye useful in analyzing cell cycles. DRAQ5 can be used in many medical fields like immunocytochemistry and immunohistochemistry, and applications like flow cytometry and high content screening. Upon a brief inspection of the literature surrounding DRAQ5, there seemed to be some inconsistencies when talking about the binding mechanism in particular. DRAQ5 can be seen to be described as having both an intercalant binding mechanism, as well as binding between the A-T minor groove in DNA. These two different binding mechanisms are sometimes used interchangeably, while at other times they are used to mean completely different things. In order to reconcile these discrepancies, previous literature was consulted and analyzed to determine if a general consensus about the binding mechanism could be drawn. The binding mechanism was found to be concentration dependent. At concentrations less than 5μM DRAQ5 appeared to bind at the A-T minor groove, whereas at concentrations greater than 5 μM it binds intercalatedly, or in-between the nucleotides. The effects and implications of this have not yet been explored. Most of the existing articles involve using DRAQ5 at a concentration of 5μM. How does DRAQ5 concentration affect the way it is used? Does it have any impact on cell cycle and cell death? Possible implications and proposed research would be about exploring the effects of this concentration-dependent binding mechanism. Literature that was published after this discovery seems to not be significantly updated to take this into account leaving continuous confusion about DRAQ5. In the future the literature available on this topic should be updated enough to take this into account during the experimentation process so that the effects are properly understood. Possible experimentation into this could involve the replication of some previous experiments done on DRAQ5, with the additional variable of different concentrations.

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Undergraduate

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Apr 16th, 1:00 PM

Investigating the Binding Mechanism of DRAQ5

Poster - Theoretical Proposal

DRAQ5 is a synthetic fluorescent dye. Most commonly it is used to tag double stranded DNA. Since the dye is able to permeate the cell membrane, it often binds to the nucleus of the cell. This makes the dye useful in analyzing cell cycles. DRAQ5 can be used in many medical fields like immunocytochemistry and immunohistochemistry, and applications like flow cytometry and high content screening. Upon a brief inspection of the literature surrounding DRAQ5, there seemed to be some inconsistencies when talking about the binding mechanism in particular. DRAQ5 can be seen to be described as having both an intercalant binding mechanism, as well as binding between the A-T minor groove in DNA. These two different binding mechanisms are sometimes used interchangeably, while at other times they are used to mean completely different things. In order to reconcile these discrepancies, previous literature was consulted and analyzed to determine if a general consensus about the binding mechanism could be drawn. The binding mechanism was found to be concentration dependent. At concentrations less than 5μM DRAQ5 appeared to bind at the A-T minor groove, whereas at concentrations greater than 5 μM it binds intercalatedly, or in-between the nucleotides. The effects and implications of this have not yet been explored. Most of the existing articles involve using DRAQ5 at a concentration of 5μM. How does DRAQ5 concentration affect the way it is used? Does it have any impact on cell cycle and cell death? Possible implications and proposed research would be about exploring the effects of this concentration-dependent binding mechanism. Literature that was published after this discovery seems to not be significantly updated to take this into account leaving continuous confusion about DRAQ5. In the future the literature available on this topic should be updated enough to take this into account during the experimentation process so that the effects are properly understood. Possible experimentation into this could involve the replication of some previous experiments done on DRAQ5, with the additional variable of different concentrations.

 

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