Proposed model for binding of permethrin and deltamethrin insecticides with ct-DNA, a structural comparative study

•The interactions of permethrin and deltamethrin insecticides with DNA have been studied by Uv-Vis, thermodynamic measurements, CV, CD, FT-IR, AFM and two layer ONIONM methods.•The permethrin interacts via groove and partial intercalation modes.•The deltamethrin interacts via groove binding mode.•The results show permethrin interacts more with DNA.

In this work, the interaction of two synthetic pyrethroid insecticides, permethrin (PER) and deltamethrin (DEL), with ct-DNA has been studied by cyclic voltammetry (CV), circular dichroism (CD), competitive fluorescence, atomic force microscopy (AFM), UV–vis spectroscopy, thermodynamic measurements, Fourier-transform infra-red (FT-IR), high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and two-layered ONIOM (our N-layered integrated molecular orbital+molecular mechanics) (DFT B3LYP, 6-31++G(d, p):UFF) molecular modeling methods. The last four methods were also utilized to study the binding of DEL with DNA. The results revealed that the PER may interact through partial intercalation and groove binding process while the PER only interacts through groove binding. Finally, the insecticides structure effect on interaction is discussed.