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Updated: Mar 2, 2026

Genome-wide Mapping of Drug-DNA Interactions in Cells with COSMIC Crosslinking of Small Molecules to Isolate Chromatin
Published on: January 20, 2016
Biophysical aspects and biological implications of the interaction of benzophenanthridine alkaloids with DNA
Motilal Maiti1, Gopinatha Suresh Kumar2
1Biophysical Chemistry Laboratory, Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata, 700032, India. mmaiti@iicb.res.in.
Abstract:
Benzophenanthridine alkaloids represent a very interesting and significant group of natural products that exhibit a broad range of biological and pharmacological properties. Among this group of alkaloids, sanguinarine, nitidine, fagaronine, and chelerythrine have the potential to form molecular complexes with DNA structures and have attracted recent attention for their possible clinical and pharmacological utility. This review focuses on the interaction of these alkaloids with polymorphic DNA structures (B-form, Z-form, HL-form, and triple helical form) reported by several research groups employing various physical techniques such as spectrophotometry, spectrofluorimetry, circular dichroism, NMR spectroscopy, thermal melting, viscometry as well as thermodynamic analysis by isothermal titration calorimetry and differential scanning calorimetry to elucidate the mode and mechanism of action at the molecular level to determine the structure-activity relationship. DNA binding properties of these alkaloids are interpreted in relation to their biological activity.
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