Theoretical analyses and experimental validation of the effects caused by the fluorinated substituent modification of DNA

Halogen-modified nucleic acid molecules, such as trifluorothymidine (FTD) and 5-fluorouracil, are widely used in medical science and clinical site. These compounds have a very similar nucleobase structure. It is reported that both of these compounds could be incorporated into DNA. The incorporation of FTD produces highly anti-tumor effect. However, it is not known whether to occur a significant effect by the incorporation of 5-fluorouracil. Nobody knows why such a difference will occur. To understand the reason why there is large differences between trifluorothymidine and 5-fluorouracil, we have performed the molecular dynamics simulations and molecular orbital calculations. Although the active interaction energy between Halogen-modified nucleic acids or and complementary adenine was increased, in only FTD incorporated DNA, more strongly dispersion force interactions with an adjacent base were detected in many thermodynamic DNA conformations. As the results, the conformational changes occur even if it is in internal body temperature. Then the break of hydrogen bonding between FTD and complementary adenine base occur more frequently. The double helix structural destabilization of DNA with FTD is resulted from autoagglutination caused by the bonding via halogen orbitals such as halogen bonding and the general van der Waals interactions such as CH–π , lone pair (LP)–π , and π –π interactions. Therefore, it is strongly speculated that such structural changes caused by trifluoromethyl group is important for the anti-tumor effect of FTD alone.