Heteroaromatic Oligoamides with dDNA Affinity (review)

Abstract

Heteroaromatic oligoamides are selective ligands for sequence-specific dDNA binding, many artificial oligoamides modeled on naturally occurring compounds and their dDNA binding motifs having been prepared over the last ten years. The large number of reported individual compounds does not allow each structure to be covered within the scope of this review, so we concentrate on examples of the most successful linear and tethered oligoamide structures, such as hairpin, H-pin, or cyclic structures, and the ensemble of heteroaromatic amino acids used as their building blocks. This provides an overview of which chemical structures are currently in use for sequence-specific dDNA recognition by artificial ligands and what they can achieve. (© Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 69451 Weinheim, Germany, 2003)