BACKGROUND Cytosine- and guanine-rich regions of DNA are capable of forming complex structures named i-motifs and G-quadruplexes, respectively. In the present study the solution equilibria at nearly physiological conditions of a 34-base long cytosine-rich sequence and its complementary guanine-rich strand corresponding to the first intron of the n-myc gene were studied. Both sequences, not yet ...

The HDV ribozyme's folding pathway is, by far, the most complex folding pathway elucidated to date for a small ribozyme. It includes 6 different steps that have been shown to occur before the chemical cleavage. It is likely that other steps remain to be discovered. One of the most critical of these unknown steps is the formation of the trans Watson-Crick GU base pair within loop III. The U(23) ...

ABSTRACT First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors selection papers published in Journal Cell Science, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Elliott Bernard author on ‘M. tuberculosis infection human iPSC-derived macrophages reveals complex membrane dynamics during xenophagy evasion’, JCS. PhD student lab Maximiliano (Max) Gutierrez at T...

Why was this? Culture plays a role in science, as it does in other human activities. Culture is defined by what we accept without explanation, what demands an explanation, and what is “aesthetic”. The rapid acceptance of the “elegant” Watson−Crick model can be attributed to the culture of the time. How so? As it turned out, the regularly sized “rungs” on the two strand duplex ladder fit closely...