Biosynthetic intermediates and synthetic analogues of bleomycin (BLM) have been investigated for their metal binding, dioxygen activation, and DNA cleavage. Molecular O2 was activated by the Fe(II) complex of a syntheticmodel ligand. Nucleotide sequence specificities in DNA cleavage by the BLM-Fe(II) and deglyco-BLM-Fe(II) complexes were almost identical. It has been shown that (1) the β-aminoala