Recently, the interaction of Cu(II) complexes with nucleic acid has attracted attention due to the study of mutation of genes and therapeutic approaches, [2][3][4][5][6] because DNA is thought to be the target of the chemotherapy in the treatment of tumors.7) Some ternary complexes of Cu(II) of 1,10-phenanthroline(phen) have antitumor activity. 8) Various novel Cu(II) complexes with different ligand species have been designed and synthesized, 3,9) and the interaction of complexes with DNA has been characterized. Several groups 1,3,[10][11][12][13] showed that some Cu(II) complexes with phen bind to DNA noncovalently in the minor groove and the free hydroxyl radicals formed due to the reaction of reduced Cu(II) complex with H 2 O 2 lead to strand scission of DNA. Chikira and coworkers 9) investigated the orientation of Cu(II) complexes of phen or the ternary Cu(II) complexes with amino acids on DNA using electron paramagnetic reasonance method and suggested that the complexes bind to DNA with several different binding modes, such as non intercalative binding in the minor groove of DNA and/or intercalative binding. In addition to studies characterizing the interaction of Cu(II) complexes with DNA, there were a few studies on the crystal structures of ternary Cu(II) complexes of amino acids with heterocyclic ligands, such as glutamic acid and phen, 2,2Ј-bipyridine(bpy), 4,14) aspartic acid and bpy, 15) serine and phen, 16) proline and phen, 17) or glycine and phen. 18,19) We aimed to synthesize and determine three ternary Cu(II) complexes containing an amino acid, glycine ligand, and different heterocyclic ligands, phen, bpy, and 2,2Ј-bipyridylamine (bpa) and evaluate the ability the complexes to cleave DNA. The following three complexes (Fig. 1) were prepared and the structures, DNA binding, and DNA cleavage were examined. The three complexes are designated as [Cu(Gly)(bpy)Cl] · 2H 2 O (1), [Cu(Gly)(phen)Cl] 2 · 7H 2 O (2), and [Cu(bpa)(phen)(H 2 O)Cl] (3). We had previously determined the structure of (1), 1) and the structures of (2) and (3) were determined in this study. The structural features of (1) were calculated using the previous coordination data 1) and cited together with those of (2) and (3)