Anchorage of oligonucleotide hybridization by tethered phenazine nucleoside analogue

UV absorption and fluorescence techniques with a thermal denaturation procedure were used in studies of the anchorage of an oligonucleotide hybridization by a covalently tethered nucleoside analogue of an intercalating imidazophenazine derivative (Pzn). The formation by the (dT) 10 Pzn conjugate of the duplex complex with (dA) 15 and the triplex complex with (dA) 15 or poly(dA)·poly(dT) was studied in buffered solutions with 0.11 and/or 1 M sodium ions at the oligomer strand concentration of 10 μ M . Because of the Pzn emission sensitivity to the interaction with adenine bases, a fluorescence technique was found to be effective in the detection of melting transitions. The attached Pzn substantially enhanced the thermal stability of complexes formed by (dT) 10 because of the intercalation mechanism, which increased the temperature of half‐dissociation of the duplex by 10–12°C and of the triplexes by ∼13°C. With the assumption of a two‐state model of transition, the thermodynamic parameters for duplex formations were derived. The investigated variant of conjugation has a certain advantage over the widely used attachment via a flexible linker, consisting of a predetermined location of the Pzn chromophore in target sequences that makes it useful as a fluorescent reporter of the hybridization correctness. Molecular modeling was used to construct the geometries of the intercalation sites that turned out to be in conformity with the behavior of the Pzn fluorescence. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Biopolymers (Biospectroscopy), 2003