Nucleic Acid Quadruplexes and Metallo-Drugs

Abstract

Guanine-rich sequences of DNA can readily fold into tetra-stranded helical assemblies known as G-quadruplexes (G4s). It has been proposed that these structures play important biological roles in transcription, translation, replication, and telomere maintenance. Therefore, over the past 20 years they have been investigated as potential drug targets for small molecules including metal complexes. This chapter provides an overview of the different classes of metal complexes as G4-binders and discusses the application of these species as optical probes for G-quadruplexes as well as metallo-drugs.