Adenine-uridine base pairing at the water-solid-interface

The formation of the base pair adenine-uracil at a water-solid interface, at an immobilized monolayer of adenine disulfide with adenine groups exposed to the very surface, respectively, is shown here. To overcome the steric hindrance of tightly packed adenine groups in a pure adenine thiolate monolayer on gold, the formation of self-assembled monolayers out of a binary mixture of the adenine disulfide and CH_3- or OH-terminated thiols are investigated. Electro-chemical investigations, surface plasmon spectroscopy (PSP, plasmon surface polariton), multimode waveguide-PSP- coupling spectroscopy, contact angle measurements, and spontaneous desorption time-of-flight mass spectrometry were used to characterize the monolayers. The specific base pairing was investigated for a variety of monolayer compositions. A specific base pairing was successful for an optimized mixed adenine/OH-terminated thiol monolayer. Nevertheless unspecific binding is a problem.