Unique hole-trapping property of the human telomere sequence

The hypothetical protection of genes from oxidative damage provided by the G-rich telomeric overhangs located at the end of chromosomes, which consist, in humans, of single strands of TTAGGG sequence repeats, is investigated here. First principle Moller-Plesset perturbation theory calculations reveal that the TTAGGG human telomere sequence is particularly prone to oxidation and can act as a profound hole trap as deep as a sequence of five consecutive guanines. In addition, we show that the sequence dependence is very important and that modifications in the human telomeric sequence can induce crucial changes in the electronic structure of the sequence, with concomitant increase of the ionization energy. These theoretical results provide, for the first time, quantitative data indicating a high and unique efficiency of the human telomeric sequence as a trap in long-range hole migration which will aid in the design of subsequent experiments.