The effects of varying the substituent and DNA sequence on the stability of 4-substituted DNA-naphthalimide complexes.

DNA duplexes are stabilized by many interactions, one of which is stacking interactions between the nucleic acid bases. These interactions are useful for designing small molecules that bind to DNA. Naphthalimide intercalators have been shown to be valuable anti-cancer agents that stack between the DNA bases and exhibit stabilizing effects.

Effect of intercalator substituent and nucleotide sequence on the stability of DNA- and RNA-naphthalimide complexes.

DNA intercalators are commonly used as anti-cancer and anti-tumor agents. As a result, it is imperative to understand how changes in intercalator structure affect binding affinity to DNA. Amonafide and mitonafide, two naphthalimide derivatives that are active against HeLa and KB cells in vitro, were previously shown to intercalate into DNA.

The use of hammett constants to understand the non-covalent binding of aromatics.

Non-covalent interactions of aromatics are important in a wide range of chemical and biological applications. The past two decades have seen numerous reports of arene-arene binding being understood in terms Hammett substituent constants, and similar analyses have recently been extended to cation-arene and anion-arene binding. It is not immediately clear why electrostatic Hammett parameters should work so well in predicting the binding for all three interactions, given that different intermolecular forces dominate each interaction.

Face-to-face arene-arene binding energies: dominated by dispersion but predicted by electrostatic and dispersion/polarizability substituent constants.

Parallel face-to-face arene-arene complexes between benzene and substituted benzenes have been investigated at the MP2(full)/6-311G** and M05-2X/6-311G** levels of theory. A reasonably good correlation was found between the binding energies and the ∑|σ(m)| values of the substituted aromatics. It is proposed that a substituent |σ(m)| value informs on both the aromatic substituent dispersion/polarizability and the effect the substituent has on the aromatic electrostatics.