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The Benzyl Moiety in a Quinoxaline‐Based Scaffold Acts as a DNA Intercalation Switch
Author(s) -
Mahata Tridib,
Kanungo Ajay,
Ganguly Sudakshina,
Modugula Eswar Kalyan,
Choudhury Susobhan,
Pal Samir Kumar,
Basu Gautam,
Dutta Sanjay
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
angewandte chemie international edition
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.831
H-Index - 550
eISSN - 1521-3773
pISSN - 1433-7851
DOI - 10.1002/anie.201511881
Subject(s) - intercalation (chemistry) , quinoxaline , moiety , dna , chemistry , monomer , combinatorial chemistry , scaffold , stereochemistry , biochemistry , computer science , organic chemistry , polymer , database
Quinoxaline antibiotics intercalate dsDNA and exhibit antitumor properties. However, they are difficult to synthesize and their structural complexity impedes a clear mechanistic understanding of DNA binding. Therefore design and synthesis of minimal‐intercalators, using only part of the antibiotic scaffold so as to retain the key DNA‐binding property, is extremely important. Reported is a unique example of a monomeric quinoxaline derivative of a 6‐nitroquinoxaline‐2,3‐diamine scaffold which binds dsDNA by two different modes. While benzyl derivatives bound DNA in a sequential fashion, with intercalation as the second event, nonbenzyl derivatives showed only the first binding event. The benzyl intercalation switch provides important insights about molecular architecture which control specific DNA binding modes and would be useful in designing functionally important monomeric quinoxaline DNA binders and benchmarking molecular simulations.