Investigation of the effects of nucleotide mutations in the loop regions of the vegf gene promoter g-quadruplex sequence on its protein binding specificity

Abstract

This project focuses on the investigation of the effects on binding specificity of mutations in the VEGF promoter sequence that was identified to bind to a few nuclear proteins. The VEGF promoter was previously discovered by our group to be a promising potential aptamer using our genome-inspired reverse selection approach to aptamer discovery. The goal of this project was to learn more about the effects of sequence mutations on the binding specificity of the VEGF promoter. These studies demonstrate that nucleotide base mutations in the loop regions of the VEGF promoter can improve its specificity and reveals the potential of future research into the mutation of aptamer sequences.