Structural effect of cationic copolymers on nucleic acid-chaperoning activity.

In order to evaluate the effect of cationic copolymer structures on their nucleic acid-chaperoning activity, we prepared various copolymers having different cationic residues or backbone molecular weight. It was revealed that nucleic acid-chaperoning activity increases with increasing molecular weight of the copolymer backbone and that the copolymer having the guanidino groups is effective for increasing nucleic acid-chaperoning activity. Compared with PLL-g-Dex, GPLL-g-Dex has weak activity to stabilize ds DNA. This weak stabilization effect of GPLL-g-Dex may contribute to the higher accelerating effect.