Influence of percentage of guanine molecules, OH radicals, UV irradiation and temperature on electrooxidation of short synthetic oligonucleotides

Abstract

The electrooxidation of short synthetic 20-nucleotides DNA sequences with various amount of guanine molecules has been studied in a wide temperature range by square wave voltammetry and the results were compared with UV–vis and CD spectra. A twofold increase of dsDNA voltammetric peak, related to an increase in the number of electrons transfered in the guanine electrooxidation process was found to begin at a temperature lower by circa 20 °C compared to the well known increase of the dsDNA absorbance upon denaturation. Since the dsDNA voltammetric peaks are related directly to the electrooxidation of guanine and adenine, early conformational changes in dsDNA are responsible for this effect. An increase in percentage of guanine in the DNA chains caused a delay in the conformational, predenaturation changes. An exception to this behavior was found for polyguanine (100% guanine). Interestingly, two distinct ranges of change in ellipticity in the CD spectra correlate well with the changes obtained by voltammetry. We have also checked the influence of OH radicals and UV irradiation on the dsDNA oxidation.