Terahertz waves regulate the mechanical unfolding of tau pre-mRNA hairpins

Qin Zhang; Lixia Yang; Kaicheng Wang; Lianghao Guo; Hui Ning; Shaomeng Wang; Yubin Gong

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.107572

Terahertz waves regulate the mechanical unfolding of tau pre-mRNA hairpins

iScience. 2023 Aug 9;26(9):107572. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.107572. eCollection 2023 Sep 15.

Authors

Qin Zhang¹, Lixia Yang², Kaicheng Wang¹, Lianghao Guo¹, Hui Ning¹, Shaomeng Wang¹, Yubin Gong¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Electronic Science and Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, Sichuan 611731, China.
² School of Physics, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, Sichuan 611731, China.

Abstract

Intermolecular interactions, including hydrogen bonds, dominate the pairing and unpairing of nucleic acid chains in the transfer process of genetic information. The energy of THz waves just matches with the weak interactions, so THz waves may interact with biomolecules. Here, the dynamic effects of THz electromagnetic (EM) waves on the mechanical unfolding process of RNA hairpins (WT-30nt and its mutants, rHP, SARS-CoV-2, and SRV-1 SF206) are investigated using steered molecular dynamics (SMD) simulations. The results show that THz waves can either promote the unfolding of the double helix of the RNA hairpin during the initial unfolding phase (4-21.8 THz) or significantly enhance (23.8 and 25.5 THz) or weaken (37.4 and 41.2 THz) its structural stability during unfolding. Our findings have important implications for applying THz waves to regulate dynamic deconvolution processes, such as gene replication, transcription, and translation.

Keywords: Molecular structure; Radiation physics.