Hydrogen Bonding in Nucleic Acids is Essential for Life

1 Hydrogen Bonding in the Nucleic Acids is Essential for Life 

Base-pair hydrogen bonding of the Watson-Crick type is fundamental in all biological processes where nucleic acids are involved. These processes, which are chiefly DNA replication and protein biosynthesis [650, 651], were understood only at the molecular level when Watson and Crick discovered the three-dimensional structure of DNA [27, 527J. This structure consists of two polynucleotide chains running in opposite directions (antiparallel), and twisted into a right-handed double helix. The hydrophobic purine and pyrimidine bases are stacked in the center 

For reduplication, the chains are separated and on each a new, complementary strand is synthesized by enzymes called DNA polymerases [652J. For protein biosynthesis, the DNA is copied (transcribed) into the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) by the enzyme RNA polymerase (Fig. 20.2) where, in contrast to DNA, the deoxyribose is replaced by ribose and thymine by the equivalent uracil. Here again, the Watson-Crick base pair plays the crucial role so that the mRNA sequence is complementary to the DNA sequence. 

In order to read the sequence of nucleotides in the mRNA and to translate it into the protein sequence, the complicated multi-protein-subunit machinery called 

The Role of Hydrogen Bonding in the Structure and Function of the Nucleic Acids 

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