Mercury^II-Mediated Formation of Thymine−Hg^II−Thymine Base Pairs in DNA Duplexes

Abstract

The very specific binding of the HgII ion unexpectedly and significantly stabilizes naturally occurring thymine-thymine base mispairing in DNA duplexes. Following this finding, we prepared DNA duplexes containing metal-mediated base pairs at the desired sites, as well as novel double helical architectures consisting only of thymine-HgII-thymine pairs.