Experimental and computational studies on sensing of DNA damage in Alzheimer's disease

DNA damage plays a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) therefore, an innovative ss-DNA/dopamine/TiO2/FTO electrode strategy was developed to detect the genotoxicity upon photocatalytic reactions. This study involves a computational and electrochemical investigation towards the direct measurement of DNA damage. Computational chemistry was useful to resolve the intricate chemistry problems behind electrode constructions. The computational protocols were simultaneously carried out comprising of density functional theory (DFT) calculations, Metropolis Monte Carlo (MC) adsorption studies, and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The DFT calculations elucidated the structural, electronics, and vibrational properties of the electrode components resulting in a good agreement with the experimental parameters. The MC simulations carried out using simulated annealing predicted the adsorption process within layer-by-layer electrode as well generating reliable inputs prior to MD simulations. A 100 ns MD simulations were performed using a canonical ensemble provided information on the thermodynamics parameters such as total energy, temperature, and potential energy profiles, including radius of gyrations and atomic density profiles. Binding energies calculated from the MD trajectories revealed increasing interaction energies for the layer-by-layer electrode, in agreement with the electrochemical characterization studies (i.e. gradual decrease of cyclic voltammogram (CV) as well as increasing diameter of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) semicircle upon electrode modification). The higher binding energies may lead to smaller changes in the electrochemical polarizability which directly affect to the decreasing of redox peak current and charge transfer resistance enhancement. Instead, HOMO-LUMO DFT levels are also taken into account to explain electron transfer phenomena within layer construction leading to the alteration of CV behaviours. Experimentally, the ss-DNA was electronically linked to TiO2/FTO surface through dopamine as a molecular anchor. Electrochemical measurements using cyclic voltammetry and EIS were employed to characterize the electrode modifications. The square wave voltammetry was subsequently used to measure the DNA damage and the potency of antioxidant treatment using ascorbic acid (AA) due to its ability in protecting the DNA from the damages. The presence of AA significantly protected the DNA from the damage, therefore was able to be used as a potential treatment in AD. Theoretically, guanine residues predicted by DFT as the most reactive sites of the ss-DNA involved in the genotoxic reactions. Overall, the theoretical studies successfully validated the experimental study as well as providing the molecular basis of interaction phenomena towards electrode constructions. Our results highlight the potential application of this methodology to screen the genotoxicity in Alzheimer’s, suggesting the important role of theoretical studies to predict the molecular interaction and validation of the DNA-based sensors and bioelectronics.