The development of metal base pairs is of immense importance for the construction of DNA nanostructures. Here we report the synthesis of a biaryl pyrazole-phenol nucleoside that forms in DNA a stable self-pair upon complexation of a Cu(II) ion. A sequence with five consecutive pyrazole nucleotides allows the complexation of five Cu(II) ions in a row.We are currently experiencing the increased use of DNA strands for the defined construction of two and three dimensional nanoobjects. 1-3 Nowadays DNA nanoconstructions allow not only the assembly of nanoobjects with complex shapes, but also of nanosystems that feature new unusual functions. [4][5][6] Examples include the decoration of DNA structures with catalytically competent or sensoring proteins, 7-9 and the construction of cage-like DNA nanoobjects for the encapsulation of cargo that is released by a defined outside stimulus. 10 Currently it is of interest to create DNA nanostructures that exhibit novel electronic and magnetic properties. This would allow the controlled assembly of nanomagnets or electronically switchable devices. Taking advantage of the interesting electronic and magnetic properties of the metal ions with unpaired electrons, research has focused on the design of metal complexing ligandosides capable of complexing such metal ions in the DNA duplex. 11 Alternatively, the incorporation of metal ions into DNA might allow the design of new catalytically competent nanosystems at the boundary between homogenous and heterogenous catalysis. 12 Fig. 1 shows the ligandosides 1-3, which were so far designed for the stable incorporation of Cu(II) ions into the duplex. [13][14][15] Here we report the preparation of a new Cu(II) complexing ligandoside 4, and its easy incorporation into the DNA duplex by using standard phosphoramidite chemistry. With this new biaryl-type ligandoside the system is able to accomodate five Cu(II) ions on top of each other within the duplex.The straightforward synthesis is depicted in Scheme 1A. The starting point is 2-amino-5-bromo-anisole (5) which was, after nitrosation, converted to the pyrazole 6 by generation of the diazonium salt. Deprotection of the methoxy group to the phenol derivative 7 followed by silyl protection provided the key intermediate 8 in 58% overall yield. Cuprate based coupling of 8 with the toluoylprotected a-2 0 -deoxyribosylchloride 9 16 led to the b-configured nucleoside 10 in 53% yield. 17 Saponification of the sugar ester groups in methanol to give 11 was followed by 5 0 -DMT protection (compound 12) and generation of the desired phosphoramidite 13 using standard procedures. To unambiguously determine the geometry of the ligandoside, compound 11 was deprotected, crystallized and the crystal structure of the resulting compound 14 was solved.In order to learn more about the complexing behaviour we next synthesized the ligandoside 17 in which the phenolic hydroxyl group is permanently blocked (Scheme 1B). To this end the TIPS and toluoyl-protected intermediate 10 was selectively TIPS-deprotected (compou...