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Updated: Jun 12, 2026

CD Spectroscopy to Study DNA-Protein Interactions
Published on: February 10, 2022
Introduction of axial chirality in a planar aromatic ligand results in chiral recognition with DNA
Marc-André Dubois1, Alain Grandbois, Shawn K Collins
1Department of Chemistry, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128 Station Downtown, Montréal, Québec H3C 3J7, Canada.
Abstract:
Dimerization of a hydroxycarbazole produces an axially chiral biaryl, BICOL (2). One enantiomer (R)-2, is capable of enantioselective binding to different polymorphs of DNA. The biaryl (R)-2 was shown by fluorescence and circular dichroism to induce a shift of Z-DNA to B-DNA. The opposite enantiomer (S)-2 shows no specific binding. The significant difference in behaviour between the two enantiomers (S)-2 and (R)-2 is in line with molecular modelling studies which show two very different binding geometries between the enantiomers with each polymorph of DNA.
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