The 2'-deoxyguanosine-3',5'-diphosphate, 2'-deoxyadenosine-3',5'-diphosphate, 2'-deoxycytidine-3',5'-diphosphate and 2'-deoxythymidine-3',5'-diphosphate systems are the smallest units of a DNA single strand. Exploring these comprehensive subunits with reliable density functional methods enables one to approach reasonable predictions of the properties of DNA single strands. With these models, DN...

During the early evolution of life, 8-oxo-7,8-dihydro-2'-deoxyguanosine (O) may have functioned as a proto-flavin capable of repairing cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers in DNA or RNA by photoinduced electron transfer using longer wavelength UVB radiation. To investigate the ability of O to act as an excited-state electron donor, a dinucleotide mimic of the FADH2 cofactor containing O at the 5'-end ...

The title compound, 5-amino-8-(2,3,5-tri-O-benzoyl-β-D-ribofuranosyl)pyrimido[4,5-d]pyrimidine-2,4(3H,8H)-dione methanol monosolvate, C(32)H(25)N(5)O(9)·CH(4)O, which crystallized slowly from methanol, exhibits an anti conformation with a glycosyl-bond torsion angle of χ=-141.28 (17)°. The furanose moiety adopts an N-type sugar puckering ((3)T(4)). The corresponding pseudorotation phase angle a...

The adsorption of hydrogen-bonded and stacked nucleobase pairs on the hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) surface was studied by density functional theory and molecular dynamics methods. Eight types of nucleobase pairs (i.e., GG, AA, TT, CC, UU, AT, GC, and AU) were chosen as the adsorbates. The adsorption configurations, interaction energies, and electronic properties of the nucleobase pair on the ...

Photochemotherapy, the combination of a photosensitiser and ultraviolet (UV) or visible light, is an effective treatment for skin conditions including cancer. The high mutagenicity and non-selectivity of photochemotherapy regimes warrants the development of alternative approaches. We demonstrate that the thiopyrimidine nucleosides 5-bromo-4-thiodeoxyuridine (SBrdU) and 5-iodo-4-thiodeoxyuridine...

The nucleobase anion glycosylation of 3-bromo-4-isopropoxy-1H-pyrazolo[3,4-d]pyrimidin-6-amine (6) with 3,5-di-O-benzoyl-2-deoxy-2-fluoro-alpha-d-arabinofuranosyl bromide (5) furnished the protected N(1)-beta-d-nucleosides 7 (60%) and 8 (ca. 2%) along with the N(2)-beta-d-regioisomer 9 (9%). Debenzoylation of compounds 7 and 9 yielded the nucleosides 10 (81%) and 11 (76%). Compound 10 was trans...

Expanded (x) and widened (y) deoxyribose nucleic acids (DNA) have an extra benzene ring incorporated either horizontally (xDNA) or vertically (yDNA) between a natural pyrimidine base and the deoxyribose, or between the 5- and 6-membered rings of a natural purine. Far-reaching applications for (x,y)DNA include nucleic acid probes and extending the natural genetic code. Since modified nucleobases...

Aqueous microdroplets (<1.3 µm in diameter on average) containing 15 mM d-ribose, 15 mM phosphoric acid, and 5 mM of a nucleobase (uracil, adenine, cytosine, or hypoxanthine) are electrosprayed from a capillary at +5 kV into a mass spectrometer at room temperature and 1 atm pressure with 3 mM divalent magnesium ion (Mg2+) as a catalyst. Mass spectra show the formation of ribonucleosides that co...

Oxidative damage to DNA and hole transport between nucleobases in oxidized DNA are important processes in lesion formation for which surprisingly poor thermodynamic data exist, the relative ease of oxidizing the four nucleobases being one such example. Theoretical simulations of radiation damage and charge transport in DNA depend on accurate values for vertical ionization energies (VIEs), reorg...

The mechanism of integrase is generally accepted to be dependant on the presence of two divalent metal ions in the active site. However, the only available crystal structures of HIV-1 integrase contain either one or no metal ions, hampering structure-based design studies of integrase inhibitors. For this reason, a two-metal ion model of integrase was constructed. This model was used for computa...