title: Hydration of the DNA bases is local.
abstract: Ordered hydration sites were determined for the nucleotide bases in B-type conformations using the crystal structure data on 14 B-DNA decamer structures. A method of density representation was extended so that positions, occupancies, and distributions of the hydration sites were predicted around a B-DNA double helix by a method analogous to crystallographic refinement. The predicted hydration sites correctly reproduce the main features of hydration around the B-DNA dodecamer. In contrast to the previous observations, the newly available crystal data show the same extent of hydration of guanine and adenine, and of cytosine and thymine.
authors.affiliation: J. Heyrovsky Institute of Physical Chemistry, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague, Czech Republic.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Schneider
authors.forename: H M
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Berman
mesh_terms: D000225:Adenine; D001483:Base Sequence; D018360:Crystallography, X-Ray; D003596:Cytosine; D004247:DNA / Q000737:chemistry*; D016208:Databases, Factual; D006147:Guanine; D006860:Hydrogen Bonding; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D009838:Oligodeoxyribonucleotides / Q000737:chemistry*; D013941:Thymine
chemical_list: D009838:Oligodeoxyribonucleotides; D006147:Guanine; D003596:Cytosine; D004247:DNA; D000225:Adenine; D013941:Thymine