DNA–cisplatin interaction studied with single molecule stretching experiments

By performing single molecule stretching experiments with optical tweezers, we have studied the changes in the mechanical properties of DNA-cisplatin complexes as a function of some variables of interest such as the drug diffusion time and concentration in the sample. We propose a model to explain the behavior of the persistence length as a function of the drug concentration, extracting the binding data from pure mechanical measurements. Such analysis has allowed us to show that cisplatin binds cooperatively to the DNA molecule. In addition, DNA compaction by the action of the drug was also observed under our experimental conditions by studying the kinetics of some mechanical properties such as the radius of gyration and the end-to-end distance, e.g. Crisafuli et al., Integr. Biol., 2011, xx, xxxx.