Congratulations to our Ph.D. student Francesca Binacchi for her scientific publication entitled “A biophysical study of the interactions of palladium(II), platinum(II) and gold(III) complexes of aminopyridyl-2,2′-bipyridine ligands with RNAs and other nucleic acid structures” in Dalton Transactions. Metal compounds form an attractive class of ligands for a variety of nucleic acids. Five metal complexes bearing aminopyridyl-2,2′-bipyridine tetra dentate ligands and possessing a quasi-planar geometry were challenged toward different types of nucleic acid molecules including RNA polynucleotides in duplex or triplex form, an RNA Holliday four-way junction, natural double helix DNA and DNA G-quadruplex.
The binding process was monitored comparatively using different spectroscopic and melting methods. The binding preferences that emerge from our analysis are discussed in relation to the structural features of the metal complexes.
The work has been accepted and can be found at https://doi.org/10.1039/D2DT03483B
