Copper(II) and Zinc(II) Complexes of Conformationally Constrained Polyazamacrocycles as Efficient Catalysts for RNA Model Substrate Cleavage in Aqueous Solution at Physiological pH

As part of a quest for efficient artificial catalysts of RNA phosphodiester bond cleavage, conformationally constrained mono- and bis-polyazamacrocycles in which tri- or tetraazaalkane chains link the ortho positions of a benzene ring were synthesized. The catalytic activities of mono- and dinuclear copper(II) and zinc(II) complexes of these polyazamacrocycles towards cleavage of the P-O bond in 2-hydroxypropyl-4-nitrophenylphosphate (HPNP) in aqueous solution at pH 7 have been determined. Only the complexes of the ligands incorporating three nitrogen atoms in a macrocycle proved to be capable of efficiently catalyzing HPNP transesterification. The dinuclear complexes were found to be approximately twice as efficient as their mononuclear counterparts, and exhibited Michaelis-Menten saturation kinetics with calculated rate constants of kcat ≈10(-4) s(-1) . By means of quantum chemical calculations (DFT/COSMO-RS), several plausible reaction coordinates were described. By correlating the calculated barriers with the experimental kinetic data, two possible reaction scenarios were revealed, with activation free energies of 20-25 kcal mol(-1) .