ARTIFICIAL DINUCLEAR PHOSPHOESTERASES

Many elegant dinuclear transition metal and lathanide complexes that e fficiently hydrolyze phosphate esters including RNA and DNA have been reported recently. In most cases, the dinuclear complexes are much mor e reactive than the corresponding mononuclear metal complexes. Further more, structural and kinetic data indicate that substantial rate accel eration for phosphate diester cleavage is obtained by bridging the din uclear metal centers with the two phosphoryl oxygens. Interestingly, s uch bridging structures have recently been implicated in several metal loenzyme catalyzed phosphate hydrolyses.