Oral Presentation 18th International Congress on Photobiology 2024

Multiscale simulations insights into triplet thymine formation and reactivity. (#188)

Elise Dumont 1
  1. Universite de Cote d'Azur, Nice, ALPES MARITIMES, France

Triplet thymine is well known as a hotspot for DNA photo damage, and a reference experiments value for its energy has been inferred experimentally [1]. This average value may blur a DNA sequence dependence which can be revealed by ad hoc simulations. Beyond the isolated thymine which has been much studied [2], the dynamics of triplet thymine in a B-helix has been less investigated computationally. We have investigated owing to QM/MM-MD simulations which highlight the interaction mode of DNA-drug for a large range of photosensitizers [3,4] including benzophenone. Based on these structures, we can map the triplet-triplet energy transfer in short oligonucleotides relying on static QM/MM schemes. We also investigate in situ the impact of micro hydration in tuning photoproperties of a luminescent DNA probe [5] relying on non-adiabatic dynamics. In the future, we plan to investigate the action of photosensitizers with nucleosome core particles for which the mechanical and electrostatic embedding differ from B-DNA.

  1. [1] Francisco Bosca, Virginie Lhiaubet-Vallet, M. Consuelo Cuquerella, Jose V. Castell, and Miguel A. Miranda, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2006, 128, 19, 6318–6319
  2. [2] S. Lee, S. Shostak, M. Filatov, C. H. Choi, J. Phys. Chem. A 2019, 123, 30, 6455–6462
  3. [3] E. Dumont, M. Wibowo, D. Roca-Sanjuán, M. Garavelli, X. Assfeld, A. Monari, J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2015, 6:576–580
  4. [4] M. Deiana et al., Nucl. Acids Res., 2023, 51:6264–6285
  5. [5] E Lognon, A Burger, E Dumont, A Monari, Chem. Photo, Chem., 2024, e202400078