title: Conformational changes in DNA upon ligand binding monitored by circular dichroism.
abstract: Circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy is an optical technique that measures the difference in the absorption of left and right circularly polarized light. This technique has been widely employed in the studies of nucleic acids structures and the use of it to monitor conformational polymorphism of DNA has grown tremendously in the past few decades. DNA may undergo conformational changes to B-form, A-form, Z-form, quadruplexes, triplexes and other structures as a result of the binding process to different compounds. Here we review the recent CD spectroscopic studies of the induction of DNA conformational changes by different ligands, which includes metal derivative complex of aureolic family drugs, actinomycin D, neomycin, cisplatin, and polyamine. It is clear that CD spectroscopy is extremely sensitive and relatively inexpensive, as compared with other techniques. These studies show that CD spectroscopy is a powerful technique to monitor DNA conformational changes resulting from drug binding and also shows its potential to be a drug-screening platform in the future.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biological Chemistry, Academia Sinica, Taipei 115, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Yu-Ming
authors.initials: YM
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biological Chemistry, Academia Sinica, Taipei 115, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Cammy K-M
authors.initials: CK
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Institute of Genomics and Bioinformatics, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung 402, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Ming-Hon
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Hou
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D000998:Antiviral Agents / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D001483:Base Sequence; D002942:Circular Dichroism / Q000379:methods*; D004247:DNA / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism*; D006801:Humans; D008024:Ligands; D015394:Molecular Structure; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation
chemical_list: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents; D000998:Antiviral Agents; D008024:Ligands; D004247:DNA