Dynamics and efficiency of hole transport in LNA:DNA hybrid diblock oligomers.

We report here the effect of replacing one or both of the purine or pyrimidine blocks of a diblock stilbene donor-acceptor capped hairpin with locked nucleic acid (LNA) bases on the dynamics and efficiency of hole transport. The structures of the DNA and LNA:DNA hybrids are tentatively assigned to B- or A-type structures on the basis of their circular dichroism spectra. Replacing the bases in either the A-block or the G-block of the diblock DNA hairpin with LNA bases results in a modest decrease in the base-to-base hopping rate constant and quantum yield for charge separation. Somewhat larger decreases are observed when all of the purine or pyrimidine bases are replaced by LNA bases.