Dynamical treatment of charge transfer through duplex nucleic acids containing modified adenines.

Abstract

We address the issue of whether chemical alterations of nucleobases are an effective tool to modulate charge transfer through DNA molecules. Our investigation uses a multilevel computational approach based on classical molecular dynamics and quantum chemistry. We find yet another piece of evidence that structural fluctuations are a key factor to determine the electronic structure of double-stranded DNA. We argue that the electronic structure and charge transfer ability of flexible polymers is the result of a complex intertwining of various structural, dynamical and chemical factors. Chemical intuition may be used to design molecular wires, but this is not the sole component in the complex charge transfer mechanism through DNA.