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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Oct 28.
Published in final edited form as: Phys Chem Chem Phys. 2012 Jul 31;14(40):13754–13771. doi: 10.1039/c2cp41602f

Fig. 3.

Fig. 3

Structural perturbations to the base π-stack inhibit DNA CT. For efficient DNA CT, bases in the duplex must be well stacked with each other to achieve proper π-orbital overlap and electronic coupling. This occurs naturally in the case of fully matched DNA (top left). Nicks in the sugar phosphate backbone (top right) and methylation of the DNA bases (center left) do not interfere with the base stack and thus do not inhibit DNA CT. However, attenuation of DNA CT is observed for perturbations that disrupt the base stack including single base mismatches (center right), bound proteins that severely kink the DNA (bottom right), and single base bulges (bottom left). The attenuation in DNA CT caused by these structural perturbations, and others, has been measured with solution, surface, and single molecule platforms.