Electron transfer processes in DNA: mechanisms, biological relevance and applications in DNA analytics

Abstract

In principle, DNA-mediated charge transfer processes can be categorized as oxidative hole transfer and reductive electron transfer. With respect to the routes of DNA damage most of the past research has been focused on the investigation of oxidative hole transfer or transport. On the other hand, the transport or transfer of excess electrons has a large potential for biomedical applications, mainly for DNA chip technology.

Ab initiostudy of electron transport in dry poly(G)-poly(C)A-DNA strands

“…42 Standard norm-conserving scalar relativistic pseudopotentials with the following reference configurations are used for the different atomic species : H 1s 1 , C 2s 2 2p 2 , N 2s 2 2p 3 , O 2s 2 2p 4 , Na 3s 1 , P 3s 2 3p 3 , S 3s 2 3p 4 , and Au 6s 1 . An optimized double-basis set is employed for all the atomic species except for Au where a single-basis is used.…”

“…1 This was mainly motivated by potential applications in a variety of technological fields such as nanoelectronics, 2,3 gene sequencing, 4,5 and chemical sensing. 6 Furthermore additional interest has stemmed from the still unclear role that DNA electron conduction may play in some biological functionalities such as DNA repair.…”

Energy Transfer from Ethidium to Cationic Porphyrins Mediated by DNA and Synthetic Polynucleotides at Low Binding Densities

“…The resulting orientation factordependent Förster distances are listed in Table 1. The distances ranged from 3.79 × 10 (Table 1) were calculated for the complexes at concentrations of [polynucleotide in base] = 100 μM, [ethidium] = 0.5 μM, and [porphyrin] = 2.5 μM using Equation (5). The distance between ethidium and porphyrin was assumed to be equal for all the complexes because no cooperative binding was found.…”

“…[2][3][4][5][6] The biological importance of understanding charge transport through DNA has been highlighted by the discovery of distance oxidative damage to DNA in cell nuclei. 7,8 In regards to nanotechnology, various nanometer-sized self-assembling molecular wires have been designed using the charge transport in a DNA stem.…”

DNA Mediated Energy Transfer from 4',6-Diamidino-2-phenylindole to tetra- and bis-cationic Porphyrins at Low Binding Densities

“…Energy and charge transfers between DNA-bound or free drugs to DNA bases can damage DNA, with the stacked π-orbitals of the DNA base pairs forming a good medium of energy transfer, 1 which frequently occurs with the transfer of electrons. [2][3][4][5][6] One of the first examples of electron transfer along DNA involved metallo-intercalators non-covalently bound to DNA. DNA mediated hole transfer has also been studied, because holes can oxidatively damage DNA damage in vivo, leading to mutations.…”