UNLABELLED Recent interests, such as RNA interference and antisense RNA regulation, strongly motivate the problem of predicting whether two nucleic acid strands interact. MOTIVATION Regulatory non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) such as microRNAs play an important role in gene regulation. Studies on both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells show that such ncRNAs usually bind to their target mRNA to regulate...

Compounds that are covalent analogues of nucleic acid base pairs of normal, long, and short C1' to C1' dimensions [B. Devadas and N.J. Leonard (1990) J. Am. Chem. Soc., 112, 3125-3135.] have been added to the oligodeoxyribonucleotide d(A)6 with bacteriophage T4 RNA ligase as a prelude to placing them at defined loci within nucleic acid duplexes. Analogue cross sections that represent a normal W...

Fab fragments from Jel 103, an antibody which specifically binds to single-stranded poly(rl), were prepared by papain digestion, separated into eight isoforms and characterized by mass spectrometry. One of the purified isoforms yielded crystals suitable for structural studies by X-ray diffraction and its crystal structure was determined to 2.4 A resolution. Soaking the crystals in solutions con...

We show here that an economic basis set can describe nucleic acid base pairs involving the hydrogen bond interactions in density functional calculations. The economic basis set in which the polarization function is added only to oxygen and nitrogen atoms of strong electronegativity can predict reliable geometric structures and dipole moment of nucleic acid base pairs, comparable to those obtain...

Nucleic acids have become a powerful tool in nanotechnology because of their conformational polymorphism. However, lack of a medium in which nucleic acid structures exhibit long-term stability has been a bottleneck. Ionic liquids (ILs) are potential solvents in the nanotechnology field. Hydrated ILs, such as choline dihydrogen phosphate (choline dhp) and deep eutectic solvent (DES) prepared fro...

Development of potent new anti-Shigella agents for rapid and specific detection and treatment is of great importance. Aptamers, nucleic acid oligomers capable of specific binding to a wide range of non-nucleic acid targets, may be of value for this purpose. In the present study, we used a Systematic Evolution of Ligands by Exponential enrichment (SELEX) process to select DNA aptamers that b...