Metal Complex Interactions with DNA

Dear Colleagues,

Metal–DNA interactions has been a central topic since the early days of Bioinorganic Chemistry in the second half of the last century. With the discovery of platinum anticancer drugs, of which the mode of action involves covalent binding to guanine in DNA, DNA has become the obvious target in the design of anticancer metallodrugs. The nucleobases, sugar residues and phosphate groups provide a plethora of donor sites to which metal complexes, with a vacant or labile coordination sites, can bind. Coordinatively-saturated metal complexes can interact non-covalently with DNA through π–π-stacking, hydrophobic and van-der-Waals interactions. The careful design and selection of auxiliary ligands or conjugation of a metal-binding entity to a DNA targeting unit allow the development of sequence- and structure-specific DNA binders, which have tremendous potential as biomedical tools, in therapeutics and in diagnostics. Covalent or non-covalent binding of catalytically-active transition metal complexes to a DNA scaffold has generated highly-sophisticated artificial enzymes for asymmetric catalysis. Metalated or M-DNA shows great promise for applications in nanodevices. This Special Issue aims to highlight metal complex–DNA interactions as a major and flourishing theme in Bioinorganic Chemistry and we invite contributions on all aspects of the topic, from fundamental research to the exciting applications in biomedical science, nanotechnology and catalysis.

Dr. Andrea Erxleben
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Inorganics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• covalent and non-covalent metal complex–DNA interactions
• DNA-targeting metallodrugs
• metal–complex-mediated DNA damage
• metal complexes as DNA structural probes and footprinting agents
• metalated DNA (M-DNA)
• metal chemosensors for DNA
• DNA as scaffold for metal catalysts