Selective Excision of Biomolecules in Electron Transfer Experiments: Current Developments and Achievements

Here we revisit electron transfer processes yielding negative ion formation in gas-phase collisions of fast neutral potassium atoms (electron donor) and biomolecular target molecules (electron acceptor) in a crossed molecular-beam arrangement. The negative ions formed in the interaction region are time-of-flight (TOF) mass analysed as a function of the collision energy. Selective site and bond excision in the unimolecular decomposition of the transient negative show clear dependence on the collision energy.

Keywords: Anions, Attachment, Atom-molecule collisions, DNA/RNA subunits, DNA-strand breaks, Electron transfer, Electrons, Fragmentation, Gas-phase, Metastable decay, TOF mass spectrometry, Radiation damage.