Figure 4.

Overview of nucleic acid FF development and applications. Refinement of FFs is driven by comparisons to available experimental data on nucleic acids and suitable model compounds, as well as QM calculations that describe intermolecular interactions, electrostatic properties, and conformational energetics, and so on. Application studies on canonical and noncanonical nucleic acid structures can be performed after sufficiently rigorous FF parametrization and validation toward a greater understanding of nucleic acid structure-function relationships.