A novel DNA light switch [Ru(bpy)2pzip]2+ activated by cobalt(II) ion

DNA oxidation mediated by [Ru(bpy)2tatp]2+ upon incorporation of [Co(phen)3]3+

“…By comparing to the octahedral polypyridyl Ru(II) complexes, Co(III) complexes were recently known to possess three types of main photochemical properties, (i) showing excellent redox activity and strong affinity to DNA in the hope of developing electrochemical biosensors [16][17][18]; (ii) promoting the single-stranded cleavage of plasmid DNA upon the irradiation of light [19][20][21]; (iii) being used as an electron acceptor to quench the excited states of Ru(II) complexes [22,23]. More recently, the experimental and theoretical studies of Ru(II) and Co(III) complexes showed a difference in the low-energy bands, which were attributed to metal-to-ligand charge transfer (MLCT) of Ru(II) complexes in contrast to intra-ligand charge transfer (ILCT) or ligand-ligand charge transfer (LLCT) of Co(III) complexes [24,25].…”

Study on nucleic acid (CT-DNA and yeast tRNA) binding behaviors and cytotoxic properties of a heterodinuclear Ru(II)–Co(III) polypyridyl complex

“…In particular, the potential application of these complexes in the design and development of synthetic restriction enzymes, new drugs, DNA foot printing agents, stereoselective probes of nucleic acid structure has been explored extensively [4,[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Polypyridyl metal complexes can bind to DNA in a non-covalent interaction fashion, such as electrostatic binding for cations, groove binding for large ligands [16], intercalative binding for planar ligands and partial intercalative binding for incompletely planar ligands [17,18].…”

“…Heterodinuclear metal complexes have some advantages over other complexes as photoprobes and stereochemical probes of nucleic acids, such as increased variations in shape and size, by connecting two chiral centers into a heterodinuclear complex one could hope to amplify the chiral discrimination. More recently, non-intercalating dinuclear ruthenium(II) complexes have been synthesized as probes for DNA structure [13][14][15][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28].…”