Environmental Fluctuations Facilitate Electron‐Hole Transfer from Guanine to Adenine in DNA π Stacks

Abstract

The relative energies of radical cation states on nucleobases in DNA are considerably affected by the local distribution of water molecules and counterions. In fact, fluctuations of ΔG are large enough to render electron-hole transfer from G+ to A energetically feasible, thus allowing a changeover from the generally accepted G-hopping mechanism to A-hopping (see picture).