The biomineralization of hydroxyapatite (Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2) is of importance to the biomedical realm of bone synthesis and dental repair. DNA has been previously studied as a biological template to mineralize HAP and previous research suggests that the negatively charged phosphate backbone of DNA provides charge attraction and scaffolding for the mineralization of HAP. Through increasingly stringent rounds of SELEX (Systematic Evolution of Ligands by Exponential Enrichment), a single-stranded DNA library of 1014 unique strands has been evolved to isolate the sequences that most efficiently mineralize and bind HAP. By trapping DNA library in precipitating calcium phosphate particles, the library population has been evolved to require picomole quantities of DNA for mineralization. By using a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) instrument for mass analysis and measurement of DNA binding, the library population has been evolved to show measurable binding with nanomolar DNA concentration. This work is leading to the identification of specific DNA sequences with high affinity and high templating ability.

Selection and analysis of DNA biomimetic templates for the mineralization of hydroxyapatite

248th National Meeting (2014)

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