DNA damage by low-energy electron impact: dependence on guanine content.

Single-stranded DNA oligonucleotides (33-mers) containing different numbers of guanines (n=1-4) were tethered to a gold surface and exposed to 1 eV electrons. The electrons induced DNA damage, which was analyzed with fluorescence and infrared spectroscopy methods. The damage was identified as strand breaks and found to correlate linearly with the number of guanines in the sequence. This sequence dependence indicates that the electron capture by the DNA bases plays an important role in the damage reaction mechanism.