内容简介：
Recently, there has been an increase of interest in the discovery and design of drugs that cleave DNA and RNA with sequence specificity. This class of compounds can be used as therapeutic agents, especially in the treatment of cancer and viral diseases. Novel mechanisms have also been discovered, allowing such agents to be used as tools in the study of the structure and function of nucleic acids. The major advances have been achieved with enediyne antibiotics and their synthetic analogues, bleomycin-metal complexes, metal-drug complexes, ribozymes and their mimics, and antisense and antigene oligonucleotides. This study discusses DNA cleavage by enediyne molecules, the mechanism of action of bleomycin, the paradigm of DNA cleavers site-specific DNA and RNA cleavage and its mechanism, RNA cleavage by RNase H, RNA hydrolysis by ribozymes and metal complexes, and redox regulation of the human immunodeficiency virus.