Gold Nanoparticles Modified with Guanine and Its Derivatives: Study of Conformational Changes

The interactions between DNA and AuNPs is one of the most interesting subjects of modern nanotechnology, giving rise to plenty of applications. The studies on the identification of the binding sites between DNA components and gold nanoparticle are continuously in progress; however, information about how the interaction influences the conformation of guanine compounds is still lacking. In this paper, we report on the preparation of AuNPs modified by guanine ligands via a one-pot reduction method in aqueous solution. The nanoparticles were fully characterized by UV-vis, TEM, DLS, and zeta-potential methods. The research on gold-ligand binding sites and the conformational changes in the molecular structure of ligands was performed making use of ATR-FTIR and NMR techniques. Notably, novel interesting results on the conformational rearrangements of ribose moiety were obtained.