Metal Complex Interactions with DNA

A special issue of Inorganics (ISSN 2304-6740). This special issue belongs to the section "Bioinorganic Chemistry".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 May 2018)

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
The SFI Research Centre for Pharmaceuticals, Bernal Institute, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland
Interests: pharmaceutical cocrystals; amorphous formulations; control of crystal size and habit
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Metal–DNA interactions has been a central topic since the early days of Bioinorganic Chemistry in the second half of the last century. With the discovery of platinum anticancer drugs, of which the mode of action involves covalent binding to guanine in DNA, DNA has become the obvious target in the design of anticancer metallodrugs. The nucleobases, sugar residues and phosphate groups provide a plethora of donor sites to which metal complexes, with a vacant or labile coordination sites, can bind. Coordinatively-saturated metal complexes can interact non-covalently with DNA through π–π-stacking, hydrophobic and van-der-Waals interactions. The careful design and selection of auxiliary ligands or conjugation of a metal-binding entity to a DNA targeting unit allow the development of sequence- and structure-specific DNA binders, which have tremendous potential as biomedical tools, in therapeutics and in diagnostics. Covalent or non-covalent binding of catalytically-active transition metal complexes to a DNA scaffold has generated highly-sophisticated artificial enzymes for asymmetric catalysis. Metalated or M-DNA shows great promise for applications in nanodevices. This Special Issue aims to highlight metal complex–DNA interactions as a major and flourishing theme in Bioinorganic Chemistry and we invite contributions on all aspects of the topic, from fundamental research to the exciting applications in biomedical science, nanotechnology and catalysis.

Dr. Andrea Erxleben
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • covalent and non-covalent metal complex–DNA interactions
  • DNA-targeting metallodrugs
  • metal–complex-mediated DNA damage
  • metal complexes as DNA structural probes and footprinting agents
  • metalated DNA (M-DNA)
  • metal chemosensors for DNA
  • DNA as scaffold for metal catalysts

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Published Papers

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