A novel pyrene-guanidiniocarbonyl-pyrrole cation efficiently differentiates between ds-DNA and ds-RNA by two independent, sensitive spectroscopic methods

At micromolar concentrations and equimolar conditions in respect to basepairs, a novel pyrene-guanidiniocarbonyl-pyrrole cation 1 exhibited a strong ICD signal at about λ = 300 nm specifically upon the interaction with ds-DNA, while under the same conditions a new fluorescence maximum at λ = 480 nm appeared exclusively upon the addition of ds-RNA.