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. 1982 Jun;38(3):231–236. doi: 10.1016/S0006-3495(82)84553-0

Significance and mechanism of divalent-ion binding to transfer RNA.

M Guéron, J L Leroy
PMCID: PMC1328863  PMID: 7104436

Abstract

Phosphorus NMR shows that divalent ions (manganese) bind to tRNA phosphates as to those of DNA or isolated phosphodiesters. The time for dissociation of a phosphate-divalent ion complex is in the microsecond range. For no single phosphate is the affinity to divalent ions greater than 10 times that of the average phosphate. It is often stated that a small number of strong binding sites exist and are structurally and functionally important. This concept originates from binding curves whose properties should, instead, be traced to the polyelectrolyte nature of nucleic acids. The 31P NMR data preclude the existence of strong sites to which divalent ions would bind very selectively. The Spectroscopic and crystallographic observations of sites for divalent ions do not in fact demonstrate selective binding to these sites.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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