Novel monomethine pyridinium cyanine dyes of similar structure and containing 'affinity-modifying' groups of different chemical nature were studied by spectral-luminescent methods as possible fluorescent probes for the nucleic acids detection. It was shown that the nature of the functional groups in the dye linker influences the fluorescent properties of the dye-nucleic acids complexes. Incorporation of a hydroxyl group into the linker structure leads to a significant increase in the fluorescence intensity of the dye--double-stranded DNA complexes relative to the parent dye Cyan 40.