Selective photocleavage of single-stranded nucleic acids by cyclobisintercaland molecules

Irradiation of mixtures of a single-stranded circular plasmid and of a double-stranded supercoiled DNA in presence of the cyclobisintercaland compounds 2 or 3 shows that these reagents effect the selective photocleavage of the single-stranded entity. Furthermore, 2 also cleaves tRNAasp preferentially at single-stranded domains.