Investigation of the Stereochemical-Dependent DNA and RNA Binding of Arginine-Based Nucleopeptides Tomassi, Stefano Franco Montalbán, Francisco Russo, Rosita Novellino, Ettore Messere, Anna Di Maro, Salvatore Nucleic acids Nucleopeptides Backbone stereochemistry Solid-phase synthesis Molecular dynamic simulation Nucleopeptides represent an intriguing class of nucleic acid analogues, in which nucleobases are placed in a peptide structure. The incorporation of D- and/or L-amino acids in nucleopeptide molecules allows the investigation of the role of backbone stereochemistry in determining the formation of DNA and RNA hybrids. Circular Dichroism (CD) spectroscopic studies indicated the nucleopeptide as having fully l-backbone configuration-formed stable hybrid complexes with RNA molecules. Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations suggested a potential structure of the complex resulting from the interaction between the l-nucleopeptide and RNA strand. From this study, both the backbone (ionics and H-bonds) and nucleobases (pairing and pi-stacking) of the chiral nucleopeptide appeared to be involved in the hybrid complex formation, highlighting the key role of the backbone stereochemistry in the formation of the nucleopeptide/RNA complexes. 2020-04-28T11:57:22Z 2020-04-28T11:57:22Z 2019-04-19 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Tomassi, S., Montalban, F. F., Russo, R., Novellino, E., Messere, A., & Di Maro, S. (2019). Investigation of the Stereochemical-Dependent DNA and RNA Binding of Arginine-Based Nucleopeptides. Symmetry, 11(4), 567. http://hdl.handle.net/10481/61669 10.3390/sym11040567 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución 3.0 España MDPI