17th Annual Petersheim Academic Exposition Abstracts

DNA are polymeric structures which includes a backbone. Its backbone is made up of phosphodiester groups and sugars. Bases are attached to the sugars. The bases are adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine. DNA is duplex, which means that it consists of two antiparallel polymers/strands. The strands are wrapped around each other forming a double helix. The bases are in the middle of the double helix. Porphyrins are a group of organic compounds. They are mostly made naturally. If DNA is filled with guanine and adenine bases, it can form quadruple stranded structures. The structures can have multiple shapes. The shape depends on the number of separate DNA strands it was created from as well as the arrangements. For example, the structures can have been created from one, two, three, or four separate DNA strands. Their arrangements can be either oriented parallel, antiparallel, or mixed. The DNA’s shapes can be changed by modifying the cations that are linked with the DNA. We will be investigating the binding of a variety of cationic porphyrins to different quadruplex DNA structures.