A comparative binding study of BIV Tat peptide against its TAR RNA duplex, RNA–DNA heteroduplex and DNA duplex

Association between RNA and DNA strands to form RNA–DNA heteroduplex is important in many biological processes such as transcription, DNA replication and reverse transcription. Herein, binding affinities of a 17-mer BIV Tat peptide is compared with TAR DNA duplex, TAR RNA–DNA heteroduplex and TAR RNA duplex. It was observed that binding affinities of Tat peptide is comparable against DNA–RNA heteroduplex and RNA duplex, whereas DNA duplex binding is decidedly poor.