High-Affinity Fluorescence Sensing of G-Quadruplexes

Guanine-rich DNA and RNA sequences can adopt highly polymorphic four-stranded structures, so-called G-quadruplexes (GQs), which play an important role in different biological processes such as telomere maintenance, abortive transcription and gene regulation. Their biological relevance has increased the interest in the development of probes to sense GQs and the study of these compounds as potential anticancer agents. Although a wide variety of fluorescent sensors have been reported for GQ detection so far, none is a ratiometric probe.