Abstract
In natural systems, the arrangement of functional molecules and groups with regulated distances, orders and orientations provide highly efficient functionality. For example, in natural photo-synthetic systems, the arrangement of porphyrin derivatives with regulated distance and geometry through non-covalent interaction provide highly efficient photo-induced energy transfer. Arrangement of chromophores (multi-chromophore array) would therefore provide a good model for artificial photosynthetic systems. A single chain of oligo-DNA is able to interact specifically with its complementary counterpart chain through sequence-specific hydrogen bonding. Focusing on this property of DNA, a wide variety of non-covalent binding pairs, binding donors and binding acceptors, with high specificity and stability can easily be provided simply by varying the oligo-DNA sequences. Oligo-DNA is therefore a useful tool as “molecular glue” for constructing of nano-architecture and molecular assembly systems. We demonstrated the construction of one-dimensional polyassembly using anti-directed comple-mentary DNA dimers consisting of aromatic core (chromophore model) and two strand of anti-directed oligo-DNA. Moreover, we constructed sequential arrays of chromophores at regulated distances on a non-covalent DNA molecular assembly system using 10mer oligo-DNA/chromophore conjugates and 30 or 40mer matrix oligo-DNA in aqueous media. Photo-induced fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) behaviors were observed in the chromophore array. Such molecular assembly systems using oligo-DNA should be useful for construction of good models for a photo-energy transmission system mimicking photosynthetic systems or nanometer scale architectures.
