[DNA fusion in the presence of catecholamines and substances close to them in structure].

Using an Cphi-4A spectrophotometer (USSR), denaturation of DNA containing approximately 2% residual protein has been studied in the presence of catecholamines and their precursors: epinephrine, beta-3,4-dioxyphenylalanine, norepinephrine, 3,4-dimethoxyphenylethylamine, tyrosine, and phenylalanine. All these substances, excluding phenylalanine, induce positive excessive hyperchromicity (as compared to initial DNA). The correlation between this effect and molecular structures of the substances studied has been shown to exist. An increase of DNA hyperchromicity in the presence of catecholamines has been found to result from the oxygen presence in the aromatic rings of the catecholamines molecules. It is assumed that the interaction between the negative O-atoms in catecholamines and bivalent metal cations in the nucleoprotein complex weakens the DNA-protein binding. This leads to an additional disorientation due to the heat of nucleic acid bases, which were previously bound by the residual protein.