General misincorporation frequency: Re-evaluation of the fidelity of DNA polymerases

Re-pairing DNA: binding of a ruthenium phi complex to a double mismatch

“…Related complexes have recently been shown to have useful antitumour properties and to be useful building blocks for specic targeting. 7,8 Non-complementary base pairs or mismatches can occur due to a range of factors such as replication errors, 9 misincorporations 10 and cytosine methylation, 11 at a frequency of 1 per 10 9 -10 10 base pairs per cell division, 12 and these alter the natural interaction between base pairs. There are eight non-Watson and Crick alternatives or mismatches, which include the purine-pyrimidine G : T and A : C, the purine-purine G : G, A : A and G : A pairing, and the pyrimidine-pyrimidine C : C, T : T and C : T, and unlike the canonical base pairs, their properties depend on their nearest neighbour conguration.…”