Metalophillic Attraction in the Consecutive T-HgII-T DNA base pairs

L. Benda¹, M. Straka¹, P. Bouř¹, Y. Tanaka², and V. Sychrovsky¹

¹Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry ASCR, Fleminogovo n. 2, 166 10 Prague, Czech Republic

²Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Science, Tohoku University, Aobayama, Aoba-ku Miyagi 980-8578, Sendai, Japan

The metal atoms like AuI, PtII, AgI or HgII attract each other owing to the so called metalophilic attraction. The DNA containing mismatched Thymine-Thymine base pairs represents an ideal matrix for HgII atoms that allows formation of the T-HgII-T metal-mediated DNA base pairs. Such binding of mercury in the mismatches substitutes structurally the hydrogen bonding in cannonical DNA base-pairs. The non-covalent interactions in the consecutive T-HgII-T base-pairs include usuall base-base stacking and in addition also metal-base and metal-metal interaction. We found that the HgII…HgII metalophillic attraction contributes by ca 10% to the overall stabilization [1]. The Raman spectra of T-HgII-T base-pairs were recently used for the anlysis of mercury binding in the metallo base-pairs [2].

[1] L. Benda, M. Straka, Y. Tanaka, V. Sychrovsky, PCCP, 13 (2011), 100-103.

[2] Uchiyama, Miura, Takeuchi, Dairaku, Komuro, Kawamura, Kondo, Benda, Sychrovský, Bouř, Okamoto, Ono, Tanaka, Nucleic Acids Research, accepted.