Fluorescence studies on the interaction of ethidium bromide with duplex, triplex and quadruplex DNA structures

Under different conditions, oligonucleotides can form several alternative DNA structures such as duplex, triplex and quadruplex. All these structures can interact with ethidium bromide (EB) and make its fluorescence intensity change. The fluorescence spectra and other related parameters provided by static fluorescence techniques showed that the interaction mechanisms between EB and these structures were not always the same. Among them, B type duplex and triplex DNA adopt an intercalative mode when binding to the EB, which has a relatively high efficiency of energy transfer and the fluorescence of EB cannot be quenched easily. While for the parallel duplex DNA, the interaction mode is an outside binding in which energy transfer can hardly happen and its fluorescence intensity as well as Stern-Volmer constant is almost the same to the free EB. For the quadruplex, the binding mechanism to EB is more complex. Results from the energy transfer and quenching studies indicate that the two interaction modes noted above probably coexist at the same time.