Arenes and Aromaticity

Aromaticity is an important concept in chemistry and biochemistry.  Molecules that exhibit aromaticity tend to be more stable than non-aromatic analogs.  For example we will soon learn that aromatics such as benzene and related compounds prefer to under go substitution as opposed to addition, since the latter would destroy the aromaticity.  Aromatic molecules can participate in π-π stacking, a non-covalent interaction (secondary force), which is especially important in DNA and RNA molecules, protein folding, and molecular recognition.

Fragment of Z-DNA showing aromatic base pairs.