Synthesis, characterization and biological evaluation of novel α, β unsaturated amides

•Three derivatives of α,β unsaturated amides have been successfully synthesized.•The interactions of the amides with ct-DNA have been investigated.•All methods reveal that the compounds interact with DNA, with a higher probability of partial intercalation.•The binding free energy (∆ G) for three compounds was also computed.

Three derivatives of α,β unsaturated amides have been successfully synthesized via Ugi-four component (U-4CR) reaction. The interactions of the amides with calf thymus deoxyribonucleic acid (ct-DNA) have been investigated in the Tris-HCl buffer (pH = 7.4) using viscometric, spectroscopic, thermal denaturation studies, and also molecular docking.By UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy studies, adding CT-DNA to the compound solution caused the hypochromism indicates that there are interactions between the compounds and DNA base pairs. In competitive fluorescence with methylene blue as an intercalator probe, adding compounds to DNA-MB solution caused an increase in emission spectra of the complex. This could be because of compound replacing, with similar binding mode of MB, between the DNA base pairs due to release of bonded MB molecules from DNA–MB complex. Thermal denaturation studies and viscometric experiments also indicated that all three investigated compounds bind to CT-DNA by non-classical intercalation mode. Additionally, molecular docking technique predicted partial intercalation binding mode for the compounds. Also, the highest binding energy was obtained for compound 5a. These results are in agreement with results obtained by empirical methods.

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