Density functional study of isoguanine tetrad and pentad sandwich complexes with alkali metal ions

Isoguanine tetraplexes and pentaplexes contain two or more stacked polyads with intercalating metal ions. We report here the results of a density functional study of sandwiched isoguanine tetrad and pentad complexes consisting of two polyads with Na⁺, K⁺ and Rb⁺ ions at the B3LYP level. In comparison to single polyad metal ion complexes, there is a trend towards increased non-planarity of the polyads in the sandwich complexes. In general, the pentad sandwiches have relatively planar polyad structures, whereas the tetrad complexes contain highly non-planar polyad building blocks. As in other sandwich complexes and in metal ion complexes with single polyads, the metal ion-base interaction energy plays an essential role. In iG sandwich structures, this interaction energy is slightly larger than in the corresponding guanine sandwich complexes. Because the base–base interaction energy is even more increased in passing from guanine to isoguanine, the isoguanine sandwiches are thus far the only examples where the base–base interaction energy is larger than the base–metal ion interaction energy. Stacking interactions have been studied in smaller models consisting of two bases, retaining the geometry from the complete complex structures. From the data obtained at the B3LYP and BH&;H levels and with Møller-Plesset perturbation theory, one can conclude that the B3LYP method overestimates the repulsion in stacked base dimers. For the complexes studied in this work, this is only of minor importance because the direct inter-tetrad or inter-pentad interaction is supplemented by a strong metal ion-base interaction. Using a microsolvation model, the metal ion preference K⁺≈Rb⁺?>?Na⁺ is found for tetrad complexes. On the other hand, for pentads the ordering is Rb⁺?>?K⁺?>?Na⁺. In the latter case experimental data are available that agree with this prediction.

Open image in new window

Figure Structures of isoguanine pentad complexes with Rb⁺ at different symmetries.