Investigation of the adducts formed by reaction of malondialdehyde with adenosine.

Malondialdehyde (MDA) forms oligomeric adducts with DNA bases. It has been proposed that the 2:1 MDA-guanosine (M2G) and 3:1 MDA-adenosine (M3A) adducts result from sequential addition of MDA molecules to the nucleoside base. Reaction of 1:1 MDA-guanosine (M1G) and 1:1 MDA-adenosine (M1A) adducts with MDA does not produce the multimeric adducts. This suggests they arise by reaction of the nucleoside bases with oligomers of MDA. If so, the proposed structure for M3A is inconsistent with the addition of an MDA trimer to adenosine. Therefore, we investigated the structure of this molecule. Two-dimensional double quantum filtered COSY and hetero-COSY NMR experiments were performed, and a series of insensitive nuclei assignment by polarization transfer (INAPT) NMR spectra were also recorded. The results of these experiments revealed the presence of a propano group and two alpha,beta-unsaturated aldehydes. The UV spectrum of M3A displayed a maximum at 326 nm, similar to that of N6-[3-oxo-1(E)-propenyl]adenosine (M1A). The adducts were reduced with sodium borohydride for comparison of the UV and NMR spectra. On the basis of our results, a new structure for M3A is proposed which is tentatively named 6(5*,7*-diformyl-2*H-3*,6*-dihydro-2*,6*-methano-1*,3*-oxazocin -3*-yl)-9-beta-D-ribofuranosylpurine.