Camilo Mateus1, Stephanie Pietromonaco1, Lawrence Ngo1, Paurush Babbar1, Christopher Vellano1, Alisa Bailey2, and Karen L. Buchmueller2. (1) Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, (2) Furman University, Greenville, SC
A model system has been developed to study the thermodynamic contributions of a small molecule competing against a peptide for binding to DNA. This system is comprised of distamycin A and the DNA binding motif of the high mobility group (HMG) protein, which both target A/T rich DNA sequences. This work probes the affects of DNA sequence, temperature and salt on the competition between the two DNA binders.