Probing the electronic relaxation pathways and photostability of the synthetic nucleobase Z laser interfaced mass spectrometry.

The photostability of synthetic (unnatural) nucleobases is important in establishing the integrity of new genetic alphabets, and critical for developing healthy semisynthetic organisms. Here, we report the first study to explore the photostability and electronic decay pathways of the synthetic nucleobase, Z (6-amino-5-nitro-2(1)-pyridone), combining UV laser photodissociation and collisional dissociation measurements to characterise the decay pathways across the region from 3.1-4.