Methods to study nucleic acid structure

摘要

Nucleic acid structure has been a central focus of biochemists and structural biologists ever since the milestone model proposed by Watson and Crick that DNA is a double-helix . There is now an appreciation that DNA and RNA are not simple, static double-helices, but are complex and dynamic molecules. The current catalogue of DNA structures form a virtual "alphabet soup" of conformations that play functional roles in transcriptional regulation, recombination, and at telomer ends of eukaryotic chromosomes. RNAs, considered to be much more mundane as a helix, adopt complex tertiary and quaternary structures that are as varied as their functions. A number of recent milestone studies continue to highlight the significance of understanding nucleic acid structure at all levels, from the complete sequencing of genomes, including the human genome , to the discovery of catalytic RNAs [4-7] and micro RNAs (miRNAs) as regulatory elements [8-12]. The articles presented in this issue of Methods focus on experimentaland theoretical methods that are being applied to study DNA and/or RNA structure, starting from the sequence level, to the helical structures, to complex tertiary structures, to their complexes with proteins