The Electrochemical Approach towards Proton Coupled Electron Transfer Pathways for Oxidation of Thymine in Water (original) (raw)

The work describes the use of cyclic voltammetry to investigate the proton coupled electron transfer (PCET) pathways for oxidation of thymine in water. Biologically important compounds like DNA bases, and amino acids showed irreversible behavior when oxidized electrochemically. The reversible redox potentials for such systems (say, irreversible electrochcemical systems) were estimated by analyzing the cyclic voltammograms recorded at different scan rates. The approach presents here is relatively simple and easy for obtaining reversible redox potential of electrochemically irreversible systems. Moreover, for the case of thymine, the obtained reversible oxidation potential also used to establish the PCET-pathways for oxidation of thymine in water.