Abstract
Excited electronic states of DNA are extremely important in biology and yet most of these states have lifetimes of ∼ 1 ps. This short lifetime allows for very little nuclear rearrangement during dissipation. In particular, photoinduced thymine-thymine (TT) dimer formation has been found to be a picosecond process. The most prevalent TT dimer is formed by a [2+2] addition of the C5–C6 double bonds of the dimerizing thymines. Given the topochemical rules known for photoinduced [2+2] addition of organic compounds in the solid state, a similar set of rules is presented for TT dimerization in solution phase DNA. It is found that a single ground state geometric parameter (the distance, d,between the C5–C6 double bonds) is sufficient as a constraint on when dimers can form such that accurate TT dimer quantum yields can be predicted. The electronic basis of such a model is examined along with calibration of the model for dT20 and dA20dT20. The application and validity of this model to a variety of double and single stranded DNA systems is then discussed.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Practical Aspects of Computational Chemistry I |
| Subtitle of host publication | An Overview of the Last Two Decades and Current Trends |
| Editors | Jerzy Leszczynski, Manoj Shukla |
| Publisher | Springer Netherlands |
| Pages | 385-413 |
| Number of pages | 29 |
| Edition | 1 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 978-94-007-0919-5 |
| ISBN (Print) | 978-94-007-0918-8, 978-94-007-9771-0 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2012 |