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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1982 Mar;79(5):1413–1417. doi: 10.1073/pnas.79.5.1413

Right-handed and left-handed DNA: studies of B- and Z-DNA by using proton nuclear Overhauser effect and P NMR.

D J Patel, S A Kozlowski, A Nordheim, A Rich
PMCID: PMC345983  PMID: 6951185

Abstract

We have differentiated between syn and anti glycosidic torsion angles in nucleic acid duplexes by measuring the transient nuclear Overhauser effect (NOE) between the sugar H-1' protons and the purine H-8 and pyrimidine H-6 base protons. The transient NOE measurements demonstrate a syn glycosidic torsion angle at guanosine and an anti glycosidic torsion angle at cytidine in poly(dG-dC) in 4 M NaCl and in poly(dG-m5dC) in 1.5 M NaCl solution. These features have been observed previously in the left-handed Z-DNA conformation of (dC-dG)3 in the crystalline state. By contrast, transient NOE studies demonstrate that both guanosine and cytidine residues adopt the anti conformation about the glycosidic bond for the right-handed poly(dG-dC) and poly(dG-m5dC) conformation in a low-salt solution. We have used P NMR to monitor the equilibrium between B- and Z-DNA forms of poly(dG-dC) in LiCl solutions; at high temperatures, the equilibrium shifts from B- to Z-DNA.

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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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