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. 1996 Mar 19;93(6):2511–2516. doi: 10.1073/pnas.93.6.2511

Large electrostatic differences in the binding thermodynamics of a cationic peptide to oligomeric and polymeric DNA.

W Zhang 1, J P Bond 1, C F Anderson 1, T M Lohman 1, M T Record Jr 1
PMCID: PMC39828  PMID: 8637905

Abstract

Results presented here demonstrate that the thermodynamics of oligocation binding to polymeric and oligomeric DNA are not equivalent because of long-range electrostatic effects. At physiological cation concentrations (0.1-0.3 M) the binding of an oligolysine octacation KWK6-NH2 (+8 charge) to single-stranded poly(dT) is much stronger per site and significantly more salt concentration dependent than the binding of the same ligand to an oligonucleotide, dT(pdT)10 (-10 charge). These large differences are consistent with Poisson-Boltzmann calculations for a model that characterizes the charge distributions with key preaveraged structural parameters. Therefore, both the experimental and the theoretical results presented here show that the polyelectrolyte character of a polymeric nucleic acid makes a large contribution to both the magnitude and the salt concentration dependence of its binding interactions with simple oligocationic ligands.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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