NSF Young Investigator: Controlled Radical Delivery Systems for Understanding DNA Structure

美国国家科学基金会无机、生物无机和有机金属项目青年研究员奖为堪萨斯州立大学化学系Charles G. Riordan博士在生物无机化学方面的研究提供支持。水溶性有机金属配合物可作为碳自由基的光解源，与核酸发生反应。一类钴配合物已被发现可以切割单链和双链DNA。这些配合物的有机金属衍生物将被制备，以传递不同种类的烷基自由基，并确定这些自由基对DNA攻击的特异性。由于对DNA三级结构的识别，一些烷基自由基的立体体积可能导致序列特异性。此外，以这种方式产生的甲基自由基将被用作足迹探针来识别金属蛋白- dna结合区域。

This NSF Young Investigator Award in the Inorganic, Bioinorganic, and Organometallic Program provides support for research in bioinorganic chemistry by Dr. Charles G. Riordan of the Chemistry Department, Kansas State University. Water-soluble organometallic complexes will be used as photolytic sources for carbon radicals which will be reacted with nucleic acids. A class of cobalt complexes has been found to cleave both single- and double-stranded DNA. Organometallic derivatives of these complexes will be prepared to deliver different kinds of alkyl radicals and the specificity of the attack of these radicals on DNA will be determined. The steric bulk of some of these alkyl radicals may result in sequence specificity because of recognition of DNA's tertiary structure. Also, methyl radicals produced in this manner will be used as footprinting probes to identify metalloprotein-DNA binding regions.