title: Propeller-twisted adenine.thymine and guanine.cytosine base pairs tend to buckle and stagger in opposite directions.
abstract: Base pairs are propeller-twisted, buckled and staggered in DNA fragment crystals. These deformations were analyzed with isolated Watson-Crick base pairs using empirical potentials and buckle was found to almost linearly correlate with propeller. Interestingly, the thymine.adenine pair favours negative buckling for propellers mostly observed in DNA crystals while positive buckling is preferred by the cytosine.guanine pair. The propeller also induces opposite staggers in the adenine.thymine and guanine.cytosine base pairs.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biophysics, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Brno.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Jursa
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kypr
mesh_terms: D001482:Base Composition; D055592:Biophysical Phenomena; D001703:Biophysics; D004247:DNA / Q000737:chemistry*; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D013816:Thermodynamics
chemical_list: D004247:DNA