Interaction mechanism of 2-aminobenzothiazole with herring sperm DNA

The toxic interaction of 2-aminobenzothiazole (2-ABT) with herring sperm DNA (hs-DNA) was investigated in vitro under simulated physiological conditions by multi-spectroscopic techniques and molecular modeling study. The fluorescence spectroscopy and UV absorption spectroscopy indicated that 2-ABT interacted with hs-DNA in a minor groove binding mode. The binding constant and the number of binding sites were 7.2×103 L mol−1 and 0.95, respectively. Circular dichroism spectroscopy (CD) was employed to measure the conformation change of hs-DNA in the presence of 2-ABT, which verified the minor groove binding mode. The molecular modeling results illustrated that 2-ABT tended to bind in the region of rich A–T base pairs through the hydrogen bond between A 18 and amino group of 2-ABT. Sequence specificity was confirmed by comparison on the interactions of 2-ABT with four kinds of bases. This combination of multiple spectroscopic techniques and molecular modeling methods can be widely used in the investigation on the toxic interaction of small molecular pollutants and drugs with biomacromolecules, which contributes to clarify the molecular mechanism of toxicity or side effect in vivo.