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Updated: Mar 22, 2026

Sequence-specific Labeling of Nucleic Acids and Proteins with Methyltransferases and Cofactor Analogues
Published on: November 22, 2014
5-Mercuricytosine: An Organometallic Janus Nucleobase
Dattatraya Ukale1,2, Vaishali S Shinde2, Tuomas Lönnberg3
1Department of Chemistry, University of Turku, Vatselankatu 2, 20014, Turku, Finland.
Abstract:
The base-pairing properties of 5-mercuricytosine have been explored at the monomer level by NMR titrations and at the oligonucleotide level by melting temperature measurements. The NMR studies revealed a relatively high affinity for guanine, hypoxanthine, and uridine, that is, bases that are deprotonated upon coordination of Hg(II) . Within an oligonucleotide duplex, 5-mercuricytosine formed Hg(II) -mediated base pairs with thymine and guanine. In the former case, the duplex formed was as stable as the respective duplex comprising solely Watson-Crick base pairs. Based on detailed thermodynamic analysis of the melting curves, the stabilization by the Hg(II) -mediated base pairs may be attributed to a comparatively low entropic penalty of hybridization.
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