Adsorption of DNA Nitrogenous Bases on Nanodiamond Particles: Theory and Experiment

Efficiency of adsorption of nucleic acid nitrogenous bases (NBs) on carboxylated detonation nanodiamond (DND–COOH) particles in aqueous media at pH = 7.4–7.6 and pH = 13.4 was investigated using Raman spectroscopy and infrared (IR) absorption spectroscopy. A significant difference in the adsorption activity of NDs toward four different individual NBs, guanine, adenine, cytosine, and thymine, had been observed. The highest adsorption activity on DND–COOH was observed for cytosine and, in descending order, for adenine and thymine. At the same time, adsorption activities of the adenine–thymine and guanine–cytosine complementary pairs on nanodiamonds (NDs) were similar. Analysis of the hydrogen bond parameters in the adsorption of complementary pair adenine–thymine on the ND surface had been done using the density functional theory-based molecular modeling. The theoretical calculations are consistent with the experimental results.