Designing of improved metal complexes, irreversibly modifying the nucleic acids is important from chemical and biological point of view. In this regard copper nucleases are of great significance, since they form an important class of artificial nuclease possessing biologically accessible redox potentials and high cleavage affinity. Therefore, they are potential reagents for cleavage of DNA. For the same, coordination compounds using Cu(II) soap with nitrogen and sulphur donor ligands in a M:L (1:2) molar ratio of the type Cu2(C15H31COO) 4L2 and Cu2 (C7H15COO) 4L2 where L are 2-amino 6- bromo benzothiazole, are synthesized and fully characterized by elemental and spectral analysis namely 1H NMR, FT-IR, ESR and Mass spectra. The interaction of complexes with Lactobacillus acidophilus DNA is investigated using agarose gel electrophoresis measurements and visualization of cleavage pattern has been done on UV trans-illuminator. The result suggests that copper(II) complexes bind to DNA via different modes. Gel electrophoresis study reveals the fact that copper complexes involving nitrogen and sulphur donor moieties cleaves super coiled DNA to nicked linear forms
DNA binding, DNA cleavage, Copper palmitate, Copper caprylate Substituted benzothiazole