title: Advances in the determination of nucleic acid conformational ensembles.
abstract: Conformational changes in nucleic acids play a key role in the way genetic information is stored, transferred, and processed in living cells. Here, we describe new approaches that employ a broad range of experimental data, including NMR-derived chemical shifts and residual dipolar couplings, small-angle X-ray scattering, and computational approaches such as molecular dynamics simulations to determine ensembles of DNA and RNA at atomic resolution. We review the complementary information that can be obtained from diverse sets of data and the various methods that have been developed to combine these data with computational methods to construct ensembles and assess their uncertainty. We conclude by surveying RNA and DNA ensembles determined using these methods, highlighting the unique physical and functional insights obtained so far.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Biophysics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109; email: hashimi@umich.edu.
authors.forename: Loïc
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Salmon
authors.forename: Shan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Hashim M
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Al-Hashimi
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004247:DNA / Q000737:chemistry*; D006801:Humans; D056004:Molecular Dynamics Simulation; D019906:Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, Biomolecular / Q000379:methods*; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D012313:RNA / Q000737:chemistry*; D053838:Scattering, Small Angle; D014961:X-Ray Diffraction / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D012313:RNA; D004247:DNA