Bound anionic states of adenine
Anionic states of nucleic acid bases are involved in DNA damage by low-energy electrons and in charge transfer through DNA. Previous gas phase studies of free, unsolvated nucleic acid base parent anions probed only dipole-bound states, which are not present in condensed phase environments, but did not observe valence anionic states, which for purine bases, are thought to be adiabatically unbound. Contrary to this expectation, we have demonstrated that some thus far ignored tautomers of adenine, which result from enamine-imine transformations, support valence anionic states with electron vertical detachment energies as large as 2.2 eV, and at least one of these anionic tautomers is adiabatically bound. Moreover, we predict that the new anionic tautomers should also dominate in solutions and should be characterized by larger values of electron vertical detachment energy than the canonical valence anion. All of the new-found anionic tautomers might be formed in the course of dissociative electron attachment followed by a hydrogen atom attachment to a carbon atom, and they might affect the structure and properties of DNA and RNA exposed to low-energy electrons. The discovery of these valence anionic states of adenine was facilitated by the development of: (i) a new experimental method for preparing parent anions of nucleic acid bases for photoelectron experiments, and (ii) a new combinatorial/ quantum chemical approach for identification of the most stable tautomers of organic molecules. The computational portion of this work was supported by the: (i) Polish State Committee for Scientific Research (KBN) Grants: DS/8000-4-0140-7 (M.G.) and N204 127 31/2963 (M.H.), (ii) European Social Funds (EFS) ZPORR/2.22/II/2.6/ARP/U/2/05 (M.H.), and (iii) US DOE Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Low Dose Radiation Research Program (M.G.). M.H. holds the Foundation for Polish Science (FNP) award for young scientists. The calculations were performed at the Academic Computer Center in Gdansk (TASK) and at the Molecular Science Computing Facility (MSCF) in the William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a national scientific user facility sponsored by the U.S. DOE OBER and located at PNNL, which is operated by Battelle for the US DOE. The MSCF resources were available through a Computational Grand Challenge Application grant. The experimental material in this paper (K.H.B.) is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. CHE-0517337.
- Research Organization:
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-76RL01830
- OSTI ID:
- 912497
- Report Number(s):
- PNNL-SA-56008; PNASA6; KC0302010; TRN: US200801%%1052
- Journal Information:
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 104, Issue 12; ISSN 0027-8424
- Publisher:
- National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC (United States)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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