Nucleic Watson-Crick

The fundamental a-hehcal peptide nucleic acid (aPNA) concept is illustrated in Fig. 5.2. Our prototype aPNA module incorporated five nucleobases for Watson-Crick base pairing with a single-stranded nucleic acid target. These nucleobases... 

The amino acid sequence of our first aPNA (which we termed backbone 1 or bl) was designed based on this amphipathic hehx sequence (Fig. 5.3 B). Specifically, this aPNA backbone included hydrophobic amino acids (Ala and Aib), internal salt bridges (Glu-(aa)3-Lys-(aa)3-Glu), a macrodipole (Asp-(aa)i5-Lys), and an N-ace-tyl cap to favor a-helix formation. The C-termini of these aPNA modules end in a carboxamide function to preclude any potential intramolecular end effects. Each aPNA module incorporates five nucleobases for Watson-Crick base pairing to a target nucleic acid sequence. 

The formation of three-stranded nucleic acid complexes was first demonstrated over five decades ago [56] but the possible biological role of an extended triplex was expanded by the discovery of the H-DNA structure in natural DNA samples [57-59]. H-DNA is an intermolecular triplex that is generally of the pyrimidine-purine x pyrimidine type ( dot -Watson-Crick pairing and cross Hoogsteen base paring) and can be formed at mirror repeat sequences in supercoiled plasmids [59]. 

Santamaria, R., Charro, E., Zacarias, A., Castro, M., 1999, Vibrational Spectra of Nucleic Acid Bases and Their Watson-Crick Pair Complexes , J. Comput. Chem., 20, 511. 

We still need to clear up one or two points of nomenclature in normal replication of nucleic acids, the matrix (the + strand) and the newly formed daughter strand (- strand) are held together by Watson-Crick hydrogen bonding. This process is also referred to as cross-catalytic . Normal autocatalysis is different it leads to a product which corresponds in structure to the matrix, so that there is no difference between the + and - strands. Such self-complementary sequences are called palindromes. 

Nucleic acids which contain only adenosine, guanosine and uridine are able to form A-U Watson-Crick pairs and G-U wobble pairs. They should be able to build up complex secondary and tertiary structures. 

In molecular biology, a set of two hydrogen-bonded nucleotides on opposite complementary nucleic acid strands is called a base pair. In the classical Watson-Crick base pairing in DNA, adenine (A) always forms a base pair with thymine (T) and guanine (G) always forms a base pair with cytosine (C). In RNA, thymine is replaced by uracil (U). 

Previous work has suggested that aminoglycoside specificity may occur in nucleic acid forms that display features characteristic of an A-type conformation (RNA triplex, DNA-RNA hybrid duplex,RNA duplex, DNA triplex, A-form DNA duplex, and DNA tetraplex ), rather than in naturally occurring RNA. However, conflicting results have been reported regarding the conformation of the triplex and of the Watson-Crick duplex within these triplexes. Both... 

The antisense approach is use of nucleic acids to reduce the expression of a specific target gene. As shown in Figure 58.2, a small piece of DNA, an oligodeoxynu-cleotide that is in the reverse orientation (antisense) to a portion of a target messenger RNA (mRNA) species, is introduced into a cell and a DNA-RNA duplex is formed by complementary Watson-Crick base pairing. Cessation of protein synthesis then may result from the rapid... 

Scheurer and Briischweiler71 calculated 2hJ(N,N) couplings in three nucleic acid base pairs, namely, Watson-Crick uracil-adenine (U A) [4a] and cytosine-guanine (C-G) base pairs [4b] and in the Hoogsteen adenine thymine (A-T) base pair [7]. 

Figure 5-6 Outlines of the purine and pyrimidine bases of nucleic acids showing van der Waals contact surfaces and some of the possible directions in which hydrogen bonds may be formed. Large arrows indicate the hydrogen bonds present in the Watson-Crick base pairs. Smaller arrows indicate other hydrogen bonding possibilities. The directions of the green arrows are from a suitable hydrogen atom in the base toward an electron pair that serves as a hydrogen acceptor. This direction is opposite to that in the first edition of this book to reflect current usage.

Figure 1. Catalysis and template action of RNA and proteins. Catalytic action of one RNA molecule on another one is shown in the simplest case, the "hammerhead ribozyme." The substrate is a tridecanucleotide forming two double-helical stacks together with the ribozyme (n = 34) in the confolded complex. Tertiary interactions determine the detailed structure of the hammerhead ribozyme complex and are important for the enzymatic reaction cleaving one of the two linkages between the two stacks. Substrate specificity of ribozyme catalysis is caused by secondary structure in the cofolded complex between substrate and catalyst. Autocatalytic replication of oligonucleotide and nucleic acid is based on G = C and A = U complementarity in the hydrogen bonded complexes of nucleotides forming a Watson-Crick type double helix. Gunter von Kiedrowski s experi-...

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