title: Exploring the Interactions of the Dietary Plant Flavonoids Fisetin and Naringenin with G-Quadruplex and Duplex DNA, Showing Contrasting Binding Behavior: Spectroscopic and Molecular Modeling Approaches.
abstract: Guanine-rich sequences have the propensity to fold into a four-stranded DNA structure known as a G-quadruplex (G4). G4 forming sequences are abundant in the promoter region of several oncogenes and become a key target for anticancer drug binding. Here we have studied the interactions of two structurally similar dietary plant flavonoids fisetin and naringenin with G4 as well as double stranded (duplex) DNA by using different spectroscopic and modeling techniques. Our study demonstrates the differential binding ability of the two flavonoids with G4 and duplex DNA. Fisetin more strongly interacts with parallel G4 structure than duplex DNA, whereas naringenin shows stronger binding affinity to duplex rather than G4 DNA. Molecular docking results also corroborate our spectroscopic results, and it was found that both of the ligands are stacked externally in the G4 DNA structure. C-ring planarity of the flavonoid structure appears to be a crucial factor for preferential G4 DNA recognition of flavonoids. The goal of this study is to explore the critical effects of small differences in the structure of closely similar chemical classes of such small molecules (flavonoids) which lead to the contrasting binding properties with the two different forms of DNA. The resulting insights may be expected to facilitate the designing of the highly selective G4 DNA binders based on flavonoid scaffolds.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biophysics, Molecular Biology & Bioinformatics, University of Calcutta , 92 Acharya Prafulla Chandra Road, Kolkata 700009, India.
authors.forename: Snehasish
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bhattacharjee
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology, University of Calcutta , 35 Ballygunge Circular Road, Kolkata 700019, India.
authors.forename: Sandipan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chakraborty
authors.affiliation: Department of Biophysics, Molecular Biology & Bioinformatics, University of Calcutta , 92 Acharya Prafulla Chandra Road, Kolkata 700009, India.
authors.forename: Pradeep K
authors.initials: PK
authors.lastname: Sengupta
authors.affiliation: Department of Biophysics, Molecular Biology & Bioinformatics, University of Calcutta , 92 Acharya Prafulla Chandra Road, Kolkata 700009, India.
authors.forename: Sudipta
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bhowmik
mesh_terms: D001665:Binding Sites; D004247:DNA / Q000737:chemistry*; D044950:Flavanones / Q000737:chemistry*; D005419:Flavonoids / Q000737:chemistry*; D044948:Flavonols; D005453:Fluorescence; D054856:G-Quadruplexes; D008958:Models, Molecular; D013050:Spectrometry, Fluorescence; D013056:Spectrophotometry, Ultraviolet
chemical_list: D044950:Flavanones; D005419:Flavonoids; D044948:Flavonols; D004247:DNA; C005273:naringenin; C017875:fisetin