The DFT cluster method was employed to investigate the electronic structures and muonium hyperfine interactions in guanine nucleobase and nucleotide using three different basis sets. The total energy and Fermi contact values were calculated for muon trapped at carbon '8'. The three basis sets, 6-31G, 6-311G and 6-311G(d,p), were used in tandem with the B3LYP functional. There are significant quantitative differences in the calculated total energy. 6-311G(d,p) produced the lowest total energy as compared to the other basis sets. The lowering of the total energy is due to the increase in the number of basis functions to describe the atomic orbitals, which is consistent with the postulate on basis set completeness. The 6-31G basis set produced the muon Fermi contact value that is the closest to the experimental value. The calculated Fermi contact values for the nucleobase and nucleotide are significantly lowered in going from the double-zeta to the triple-zeta basis set by 5% and 4% respectively. The lowering of the Fermi contact value can be attributed to the extension of the triple-zeta basis set in describing the valence atomic orbitals. The presence of the sugar phosphate group in the nucleotide instead of the methyl group tends to lower the Fermi contact value. Thus, the sugar phosphate group should be taken into consideration when designing a calculation model.
The Density Functional Theory method was employed to investigate the electronic structure and muonium hyperfine interaction of muonium trapped near carbon atom labelled as '5' in cytosine nucleobase. Eighteen different basis sets in combination with B3LYP functional were examined in geometry optimization calculations on the muoniated radical. There are significant quantitative differences in the calculated total energy. The employment of basis set that does not include polarization function produces an optimized structure with high total energy. The 6-311++G(d,p) basis set yielded the lowest total energy as compared to other basis sets. The bond order of muonium trapped at C5 atom is in the range of 0.841 to 0.862. The 6-31G basis set produced the muonium Fermi contact coupling constant that is the closest to the experimental value.
In order to investigate the structure and electrical conductivity of (DNA), Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy (STM) studies were carried out on a model of DNA which was composed of a 12-mer single-stranded polyadenine connected via sugar-phosphate backbone. The 12-mer single-stranded polyadenine molecules were found to be aligned in parallel to each other at a separation 25±7.5 Å. This alignment formed a one-dimensional chain structure, which indicated that the side-by-side coupling among the molecules was strong. The STM measurements with constant current mode and fixed bias voltage, demonstrate that, the electrical conductivity of DNA bases could be deduced by monitoring the size of the structure of 12-mer single-stranded polyadenine.
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