Circular dichroism spectroscopy of DNA: from duplexes to quadruplexes.
Nucleic acids bear the genetic information and participate in its expression and evolution during replication, repair, recombination, transcription, and translation. These phenomena are mostly based on recognition of nucleic acids by proteins. The major factor enabling the specific recognition is structure. Circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy is very useful to study secondary structures of nucleic acids, in general, and DNA, in particular. CD sensitively reflects isomerizations among distinct conformational states. The isomerizations may operate as molecular switches regulating various physiological or pathological processes. Here, we review CD spectra of nucleic acids, beginning with early studies on natural DNA molecules through analyses of synthetic polynucleotides to study of selected genomic fragments.
Department of CD Spectroscopy of Nucleic Acids, Institute of Biophysics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, vvi, Brno, Czech Republic. mifi@ibp.cz
Michaela
M
Vorlíčková
Iva
I
Kejnovská
Klára
K
Bednářová
Daniel
D
Renčiuk
Jaroslav
J
Kypr
D001483:Base Sequence; D002942:Circular Dichroism; D004247:DNA / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics; D054856:G-Quadruplexes; D006801:Humans; D018911:Trinucleotide Repeats
D004247:DNA