Interactions of porphyrins with nucleic acids.

The interactions of tetrakis(4-N-methylpyridyl)-porphine (H2TMpyP-4) and its copper(II), nickel(II), zinc(II), cobalt(III), iron(III), and manganese(III) derivatives with several nucleic acids have been investigated. Spectrophotometric titrations of H2TMpyP-4 and Cu(II)TMpyP-4 with the synthetic polymer poly(dG-dC) could be analyzed by a nearest-neighbor exclusion model leading to n approximately equal to two base pairs and equilibrium constants of 7.7 X 10(5) M-1 and 8.0 X 10(5) M-1, respectively. The other metal derivatives [except for the nickel(II) porphyrin] do not provide sufficiently large color changes with poly(dG-dC) to allow analysis. In contrast, all of these porphyrins interact with poly(dA-dT) and DNA. For those porphyrins investigated, the binding profiles are not adequately fit by a nearest-neighbor exclusion model but have profiles suggesting that cooperativity effects are important. Spectral and circular dichroic experiments both suggest base specificity. With calf thymus DNA, the copper(II) and nickel(II) derivatives show prominent negative circular dichroism (CD) features and large red shifts and hypochromicity of the Soret absorption band characteristic of GC specificity, as demonstrated with the synthetic polymer. The other metal derivatives show prominent positive induced visible CD features with small red shifts and hypochromicity of the absorption bands in the Soret region characteristic of AT specificity. Only the metal-free derivative has a conservative CD spectrum suggesting distribution among GC and AT sites.