Nucleic Acids Research, 1980, Vol. 8, No. 7 1613-1624
© 1980
Articles |
The effect of ionic strength on DNA-tigand unwinding angles for acridine and quinoline derivatives
Department of Chemistry, and Laboratory for Microbial and Biochemical Science, Georgia State University Atlanta, GA 30303, USA
Received February 8, 1980. We have quantitatively examined the unwinding angles for the complexes of a related series of acridine and quinoline derivatives with DNA. Ethidium bromide was used as a control for determining superhelix densities at different ionic strengths. Relative to ethidium, 9-aminoacridine and quinacrine had an essentially constant unwinding angle of approximately 17° at all ionic strengths tested. The apparent unwinding angle for chloroquine and 9-amino-1,2,3,4-tetrahydroacridine was found to be ionic strength dependent, increasing with increasing ionic strength. This suggests that competitive noninter-calative binding at low lonic strengths causes an apparent lowering of the quinoline unwinding angle. This can also explain why 4-aminoquinaldine, examined at low ionic strength, gives a quite low apparent unwinding angle. Quinacrine along with chloroquine and 9-aminoacridine approaches a limiting value for their unwinding angle of approximately 17°. 4-aminoquinaldine and 9-amino-1,2,3,4-tetrahydroacridine could not be examined at an ionic strength above 0.03 because of their very low equilibrium binding constants.