Exploring the characterization tools of guanine-quadruplexes

Occurrence of guanine-rich sequences throughout the genome at specific locations like chromosomal ends (telomeres), promoters and Untranslated regions (UTR’s) is very well documented. Quite recently, visualization of guanine-quadruplex in human and mammalian cells have also provided a very significant evidence for the in vivo existence of guanine-quadruplex, reconfirming their biological relevance in cellular processes like replication, transcription, recombination, etc. Guanine quadruplexes have enormous potential of exhibiting various topologies which differ, by number/orientation of strands or loop orientations etc. Some relatively new polymorphic structures like 3+1 quadruplex, G-triplex, and Tri-G-quadruplex have also been proposed for the guanine-rich sequences. Various biochemical and biophysical techniques have been used to characterize these multistranded DNA structures. An extensive review of the mechanistic models of the already existing and newly emerging techniques is actually required, which may further facilitate our understanding about these structures. This review aims to summarize some of these techniques along with their requirements and limitations, which might further give some insights for the fine tuning of the solution and environmental conditions needed for facilitating guanine-quadruplex formation.