The
visible fluorescent chromophoric moiety present in the water-soluble
photoactive yellow protein (PYP) of Ectothiorhodospira
halophila is p-hydroxycinnamic acid
linked to the cysteine residue (Cys-69) by a thioester bond and it
controls the key photoinduced biological processes of the host organism.
In the present work, we have synthesized and characterized three structurally
different thiophenyl esters [viz., p-hydroxycinnamic-thiophenyl
ester (1), p-N,N-dimethylaminocinnamic-thiophenyl ester (2), and S-phenyl-3-(4-chlorophenyl)-3-(phenylthio)propanethioate
(3)] in addition to a novel (to the best of our knowledge)
stilbene-type olefinic compound, N1,N1,N2,N2-tetramethyl-1,2-bis(phenylthio)ethene-1,2-diamine (4), under the same reaction condition. All of these four compounds
showed characteristic and distinguishable chromophoric/fluorophoric
behavior in ethanol and also at pH 7.4. However, we have observed
that the intrinsic chromophoric/fluorophoric activities of (1) and (2) were greatly influenced during their
interactions with calf-thymus DNA, studied by a range of spectroscopic
and physicochemical measurements. We have also applied density functional
theory [B3LYP, 6-311G+(d,p)]-based method to get optimized
structures of (1) and (2), which were explored
further for molecular docking studies to understand their mode of
interaction with DNA. The present study opens up their possible applications
as fluorescence probes for biomacromolecules like DNA in future.