Solvent effects on excited states of DNA bases

Solvatochromic shifts for cytosine have also been calculated with a variety of methods (see Table 11-7). Shukla and Lesczynski [215] studied clusters of cytosine and three water molecules with CIS and TDDFT methods to obtain solvatochromic shifts. More sophisticated calculations have appeared recently. Valiev and Kowalski used a coupled cluster and classical molecular dynamics approach to calculate the solvatochromic shifts of the excited states of cytosine in the native DNA environment. Blancafort and coworkers [216] used a CASPT2 approach combined with the conductor version of the polarizable continuous (CPCM) model. All of these methods predict that the first three excited states are blue-shifted. S i, which is a nn state, is blue-shifted by 0.1-0.2 eV in water and 0.25 eV in native DNA. S2 and S3 are both rnt states and, as expected, the shift is bigger, 0.4-0.6eV for S2 and 0.3-0.8 eV for S3. S2 is predicted to be blue-shifted by 0.54 eV in native DNA. 

Shukla and coworkers have studied the excited states of purine bases, adenine and guanine, in water using CIS with the self-consistent reaction field (SCRF) to model the water [217,218], Tomasi and coworkers have also studied the purine bases 

These studies discuss vertical and adiabatic excitation energies but the photophysical behavior requires calculations along the PES and at highly distorted geometries, which are more difficult to carry out in the presence of solvent. Some theoretical work has been done in this area, but it is quite limited. 

The effect of solvation on uracil and thymine photophysics has been studied by Gustavvson and coworkers, who have studied uracil with four explicit water molecules and PCM to study distorted geometries [92,93,149], The conical intersection connecting Si to the ground state that was found in the gas phase is also present in solution. The barrier connecting the Si minimum to the conical intersection is lower in solution, however, causing much shorter lifetimes. So the nanosecond lifetime which is observed in the gas phase is not observed in solution but a picosecond lifetime is observed. 

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