G-quadruplex nucleic acids and human disease

Targeting Nucleic Acids using Dynamic Combinatorial Chemistry

Dynamic combinatorial chemistry (DCC) is a powerful method for the identification of novel ligands for the molecular recognition of receptor molecules. The method relies on self-assembly processes to generate libraries of compounds under reversible conditions, allowing a receptor molecule to select the optimal binding ligand from the mixture. However, while DCC is now an established field of chemistry, there are limited examples of the application of DCC to nucleic acids. The requirement to conduct experiments under physiologically relevant conditions, and avoid reaction with, or denaturation of, the target nucleic acid secondary structure, limits the choice of the reversible chemistry, and presents restrictions on the building block design. This review will summarize recent examples of applications of DCC to the recognition of nucleic acids. Studies with duplex DNA, quadruplex DNA, and RNA have utilized mainly thiol disulfide libraries, although applications of imine libraries, in combination with metal coordination, have been reported. The use of thiol disulfide libraries produces lead compounds with limited biostability, and hence design of stable analogues or mimics is required for many applications.

Making sense of G-quadruplex and i-motif functions in oncogene promoters

The presence and biological importance of DNA secondary structures in eukaryotic promoters are becoming increasingly recognized among chemists and biologists as bioinformatics in vitro and in vivo evidence for these structures in the c-Myc, c-Kit, KRAS, PDGF-A, hTERT, Rb, RET and Hif-1alpha promoters accumulates. Nevertheless, the evidence remains largely circumstantial. This minireview differs from previous ones in that here we examine the diversity of G-quadruplex and i-motif structures in promoter elements and attempt to categorize the different types of arrangements in which they are found. For the c-Myc G-quadruplex and Bcl-2 i-motif, we summarize recent biological and structural studies.