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Published on: March 31, 2019
3,3'-diethylthiatricarbocyanine iodide: a highly sensitive chiroptical reporter of DNA helicity and sequence
Jung Kyu Choi1, Alessandro D'Urso, Mitch Trauernicht
1Department of Chemistry, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071, USA; E-Mails: jchoi4@uwyo.edu (J.K.C.); adurso@unict.it (A.D.); mshabbir@uwyo.edu (M.S.-H.).
Abstract:
Using UV-vis absorption and circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopies, we explored the binding interactions of 3,3'-diethylthiatricarbocyanine iodide (Cy7) with polynucleotides of different sequences and helicity. CD showed to be a very diagnostic tool giving different spectroscopic chiroptical signatures for all explored DNA sequences upon Cy7 binding. Cy7 was able to spectroscopically discriminate between the right handed B-DNA of poly(dG-dC)(2) and its left handed Z-DNA counterpart induced by spermine or Co(III)hexamine via nearly opposite induced circular dichroic signal.

