Abstract
The structural, tautomeric, hydrogen-bonding, stacking and electronic properties of a seleno-derivative of thymine (T), denoted here as 4SeT and created by replacing O4 in T with Se, are investigated by means of ab initio computational techniques. The structural properties of T and 4SeT are very similar and the geometrical differences are mainly limited to the adjacent environment of the C-Se bond. The
canonical “keto” form is the most stable tautomer, in gas phase and in aqueous solution, for both T and 4SeT. It is argued that the competition between two opposite trends, i.e. a decrease in the base-pairing ability and an increase of the stacking interaction upon incorporation of 4SeT into a duplex, likely
explains the similar experimental melting points of a seleno-derivative duplex (Se-DNA) and its native counterpart. Interestingly, the underlying electronic structure shows that replacement of O4 with Se promotes a reduction in the HOMO-LUMO gap and an increase in inter-plane coupling, which suggests
that Se-DNA could be potentially useful for nanodevice applications. This finding is further supported by the fact that transfer integrals between 4SeT---A stacked base pairs are larger than those determined for similarly stacked natural T---A pairs.
