Charge transport in DNA in solution: the role of polarons

Since the discovery a decade ago of rapid photoinduced electron transfer in DNA over a distance >4 nm, a large number of experiments and theories have been advanced in the attempt to characterize the transfer, mainly of a radical cation or hole. Particularly influential experiments were carried out by Giese [Giese, B. (2000) Acc. Chem. Res. 33, 631-636] on the sequence G(A)(n)GGG, where G is guanine and A is adenine. These experiments were interpreted as showing that for n > 3, after the holes tunnel through the first three As, they hop onto the bridge of As, where they are localized on a single A and travel further by hopping between neighboring As. Recent experiments of Barton and coworkers [Shao, F., O'Neill, M. A. & Barton, J. K. (2004) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 101, 17914-17919] have, however, established that the hole wavefunctions are delocalized. One of the mechanisms based on delocalized hole wavefunctions that had been investigated, both experimentally and theoretically, is transport by polarons. For one type of polaron, the properties are determined by polarization of the surrounding medium (water and ions, in this case). Theory predicts that this type of polaron is delocalized over approximately four bases in DNA. Transport by these polarons could explain the results of Giese et al. [Giese, B., Amaudrut, J., Köhler, A.-K., Spormann, M. & Wessely, S. (2001) Nature 412, 318-320], recent experimental results of O'Neill and Barton [O'Neill, M. A. & Barton, J. K. (2004) J. Am. Chem. Soc. 126, 11471-11483] concerning the size of the region over which the hole is delocalized, and other experimental observations.