Effect of the 3-halo substitution of the 2′-deoxy aminopyridinyl-pseudocytidine derivatives on the selectivity and stability of antiparallel triplex DNA with a CG inversion site

Triplex formation against a target duplex DNA has the potential to become a tool for the genome research. However, there is an intrinsic restriction on the duplex DNA sequences capable of forming the triplex DNA. Recently, we demonstrated the selective formation of the stable antiparallel triplexes containing the CG inversion sites using the 2′-deoxy-1-methylpseudocytidine derivative (ΨdC), whose amino group was conjugated with the 2-aminopyridine at its 5-position as an additional hydrogen bonding unit (AP-ΨdC). The 1-N of 2-aminopyridine was supposed to be protonated to form the hydrogen bond with the guanine of the CG inversion site. In this study, to test the effect of the 3-substitution of the 2-aminopyridine unit of AP-ΨdC on the triplex stability, we synthesized the 3-halogenated 2-aminopyridine derivatives of AP-ΨdC. The pKa values 1-N of the 2-aminopyridine unit of AP-ΨdC as the monomer nucleoside were determined to be 6.3 for 3-CH₃ (^MeAP-ΨdC), 6.1 for 3-H (AP-ΨdC), 4.3 for 3-Cl (^ClAP-ΨdC), 4.4 for 3-Br (^BrAP-ΨdC), and 4.7 for 3-I (^IAP-ΨdC), suggesting that all the halogenated AP-ΨdCs are not protonated under neutral conditions. Interestingly, although the recognition selectivity depends on the sequence context, the TFO having the sequence of the 3′-G-(^IAP-ΨdC)-A-5′ context showed the selective triplex formation with the CG inversion site. These results suggest that the protonation at the 1-N position plays an important role in the stable and selective triplex formation of AP-ΨdC derivatives in any sequences.