Metal‐Modified Nucleic Acids: Metal‐Mediated Base Pairs,Triples, and Tetrads

The incorporation of metal ions into nucleic acids by means of metal‐mediated base pairs represents a promising and prominent strategy for the site‐specific decoration of these self‐assembling supramolecules with metal‐based functionality. Over the past 20 years, numerous nucleoside surrogates have been introduced in this respect, broadening the metal scope by providing perfectly tailored metal‐binding sites. More recently, artificial nucleosides derived from natural purine or pyrimidine bases have moved into the focus of Ag^I‐mediated base pairing, due to their expected compatibility with regular Watson–Crick base pairs. This minireview summarizes these advances in metal‐mediated base pairing but also includes further recent progress in the field. Moreover, it addresses other aspects of metal‐modified nucleic acids, highlighting an expansion of the concept to metal‐mediated base triples (in triple helices and three‐way junctions) and metal‐mediated base tetrads (in quadruplexes). For all types of metal‐modified nucleic acids, proposed or accomplished applications are briefly mentioned, too.