Structure of 2,4-Diaminopyrimidine-Theobromine Alternate Base Pairs

We report the structure of dusters of 2,4-diaminopyrimidine with 3,7-dimethylxanthine (theobromine) in the gas phase determined by IR-UV double resonance spectroscopy in both the near-IR and mid-IR regions in combination with ab initio computations. These clusters represent potential alternate nucleobase pairs, geometrically equivalent to guanine cytosine. We have found the four lowest energy structures, which include the Watson Crick base pairing motif. This Watson Crick structure has not been observed by resonant two-photon ionization (R2PI) in the gas phase for the canonical DNA base pairs.