Spectroscopic studies of purine. II. Properties of purine substituted at the second and sixth carbons

Abstract— Substitution of an amino group at the C2 carbon of purine causes the two main components of the X absorption band to be separated by 200–500 Å: primarily this reflects the Occurrence of the lowest-lying transition at much longer wavelengths than in purine since, except in deoxyguanosine, there is an appreciable absorption component at ? 2420 Å in these compounds. Unlike purine, the wavelength shifts produced by different solvents are not simply related to the dielectric constant or hydrogen bonding capacity of the solvents. In agreement with previous predictions thatπ-π*states should be the lowest-lying excited singlets, no phosphorescence is observed from 2–aminopurine—the fluorescence quantum yield is close to unity. Besides strong fluorescence very weak phosphoresence can be detected when another amino group is added at C6 and when an oxygen is attached to the sixth carbon (guanine) fluorescence and phosphorescence of comparable intensities are observed: the sum of the quantum yields for both types of emission is of the order of unity. Thus, the lowest-lying singlet transition must be a π-π*state. At room temperature themal quenching is the most important parameter in determining the fluorescence intensity of these molecules, however, at lower temperatures the intensity—similar to the wavelength—f this emission apparently also depends upon the ability of a given solvent to reorient and/or perturb Franck-Condon surfaces. Discrepancies observed between absorption and excitation spectra in deoxyguanosine and azaguanine appear to reflect emission caused respectively by aggregation of molecules and by keto-enol shifts.