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The role of the solvent on the binding of ethidium bromide to DNA in alcohol–water mixtures
Author(s) -
Baldini Giancarlo,
Varani Gabriele
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
biopolymers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.556
H-Index - 125
eISSN - 1097-0282
pISSN - 0006-3525
DOI - 10.1002/bip.360251111
Subject(s) - chemistry , enthalpy , ethidium bromide , alcohol , thermodynamics , solvent , solvation , entropy (arrow of time) , heat capacity , bromide , dna , organic chemistry , biochemistry , physics
The binding of ethidium bromide to calf thymus DNA is investigated over a wide range of temperatures and alcohol concentrations by means of fluorescence techniques. The presence of alcohol is found to lower the association constant, as isopropanol and n ‐propanol are more effective than ethanol and methanol. It is also found that the data from different alcohols fall very close on the same straight line when plotted vs the solution dielectric constant ϵ. It is shown that the dependence of the binding constant on ϵ is beyond the prediction of current polyelectrolyte theories; rather, it appears that the binding is greatly controlled by the activity coefficient of the dye. The thermodynamic functions of the reaction have been estimated by means of Van't Hoff analysis: a large, negative enthalpy contributes to the binding, whereas the entropy, also favorable, is only slightly responsible for the overall free energy. Both enthalpy and entropy are strong functions of temperature and alcohol concentration. We show that the dependence of the thermodynamic quantities on the temperature is removed by considering “isodielectric” binding. This can be accomplished by a proper choice of the alcohol concentration, so that the thermal dependence of ϵ is compensated. It is found that the isodielectric free energy, enthalpy, and entropy are the same for different alcohols when plotted vs ϵ. When looking at the isodielectric quantities, it appears that the binding is now opposed by a positive enthalpy, whereas the observed favorable free energy results mainly from a large and positive entropy. The relevance of hydrophobic effects emerges from the behavior of the isodielectric thermodynamic quantities, as well as from the similarities observed when other interacting systems are compared.