Effects of metal ions on thermal stabilities of DNA duplexes containing homo- and heterochiral mismatched base pairs: comparison of internal and terminal substitutions

Abstract

The effects of metal ions on the stabilities of duplexes containing a _D-homochiral and heterochiral mismatched base pairs were studied. In some duplexes containing an internal mismatched base pair, significant stabilization by Hg^II and Ag^I ions was observed. While, in duplexes containing a terminal mismatched base pair, only the duplexes containing T-T and _LT-T mispairs were significantly stabilized by Hg^II ions, and the stabilities of the duplexes containing T-T and _LT-T mispairs exceeded those of the corresponding homochiral matched duplex. The results suggest that the formation of homo- and heterochiral T-Hg^II-T base pairs at duplex termini would be useful for the thermal and enzymatic stabilization of DNA-based nanodevice.

Keywords:

• Base pair mismatch
• metal-mediated base pair
• heterochiral DNA
• fraying

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) [Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Numbers JP24550199 and JP15K05574].