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Esther M Conwell

Publications and source records attributed to Esther M Conwell.

2 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Base sequence effects on transport in DNA.

Given the success of the polaron model based on solvation in accounting for the width of a hole polaron on an all-adenine (A) sequence on DNA, we extend the calculations to other sequences. We find excellent agreement with the free energy differences measured by Lewis et al. (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2000, 122, 12037-12038) between a guanine (G) cation and a pair of bases, GG, or a triple of bases, GGG, in all cases surrounded by As, by treating AGGA and AGGGA as solvated polarons. There is additional support for hole polaron formation in DNA from experiments in which oxidative damage due to injected holes is investigated in sequences involving Gs and As. Theory and comparison with transport measurements on repeated sequences involving multiple thymines (Ts) or combinations such as ATs or GCs, where C is cytosine, led to the suggestion that the basic sequences in these cases must be polarons whose wave functions have substantial amplitudes on both chains in a duplex. The size of an electron polaron in DNA is predicted to be similar to that of a hole polaron, approximately 4 or 5 bases. Although experiments have shown that polaron hopping is the dominant mode of charge transport in DNA with repeated sequences such as AGGA, further investigations, particularly of temperature dependence of site energies and transfer integrals, are needed to determine to what extent hole transport takes place by polaron hopping for arbitrary DNA sequences.

Adenine↗
PubMed2005

Charge transport in DNA in solution: the role of polarons.

Since the discovery a decade ago of rapid photoinduced electron transfer in DNA over a distance >4 nm, a large number of experiments and theories have been advanced in the attempt to characterize the transfer, mainly of a radical cation or hole. Particularly influential experiments were carried out by Giese [Giese, B. (2000) Acc. Chem. Res. 33, 631-636] on the sequence G(A)(n)GGG, where G is guanine and A is adenine. These experiments were interpreted as showing that for n > 3, after the holes tunnel through the first three As, they hop onto the bridge of As, where they are localized on a single A and travel further by hopping between neighboring As. Recent experiments of Barton and coworkers [Shao, F., O'Neill, M. A. & Barton, J. K. (2004) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 101, 17914-17919] have, however, established that the hole wavefunctions are delocalized. One of the mechanisms based on delocalized hole wavefunctions that had been investigated, both experimentally and theoretically, is transport by polarons. For one type of polaron, the properties are determined by polarization of the surrounding medium (water and ions, in this case). Theory predicts that this type of polaron is delocalized over approximately four bases in DNA. Transport by these polarons could explain the results of Giese et al. [Giese, B., Amaudrut, J., Köhler, A.-K., Spormann, M. & Wessely, S. (2001) Nature 412, 318-320], recent experimental results of O'Neill and Barton [O'Neill, M. A. & Barton, J. K. (2004) J. Am. Chem. Soc. 126, 11471-11483] concerning the size of the region over which the hole is delocalized, and other experimental observations.

Base Sequence↗