Assessment of Dynamic Disorder in DNA Oligonucleotides Using Low-Frequency Raman Spectroscopy

The degree of DNA compaction in various regions of the cell nucleus determines whether the corresponding genes should be expressed and other crucial cellular processes, such as DNA replication and repair, should occur. Therefore, the development of approaches to the experimental assessment of DNA compactness in cell nuclei, as well as its indicator, dynamic disorder which determines the degree of thermal fluctuation in the position and mutual orientation of molecular fragments, is highly relevant. In this paper, using single-stranded guanine and cytosine oligonucleotides, as well as their double-stranded combination as an example, it is shown that dynamic disorder in DNA can be assessed based on low-frequency Raman scattering (RS) spectroscopy data. For the first time, Raman spectra of oligonucleotides have been measured over a wide frequency range, including the low-frequency (10–200 cm $${}^{-1}$$ ) and high-frequency (200–2000 cm $${}^{-1}$$ ) regions. It was found that the low-frequency Raman intensity is maximal in single-stranded oligocytosine and minimal in the double-stranded oligonucleotide, which is in full agreement with the magnitude of dynamic disorder estimated from molecular dynamics simulations. The obtained results indicate the promising application of low-frequency Raman spectroscopy for assessing dynamic disorder and DNA compactness. The use of such a technique is expected to contribute to the understanding of key cellular processes and the physical mechanisms that underlie them, which is necessary for the development of advanced methods in molecular biophysics and cell biology.