Unusual DNA structures involving four guanines in a planar formation (guanine tetrads) are formed by guanine-rich (G-rich) telomere DNA and other G-rich sequences (reviewed in (1)) and may be important in the structure and function of telomeres. These structures result from intrastrand and/or interstrand Hoogsteen base pairs between the guanines. We used the telomeric repeat of Chlamydomonas re...

The results of geometry optimisation of possible Watson-Crick-like pairs of 2,6-diamino-4-oxy-5-formamidopyrimidine (fapy-adenine) or 4,6-diamino-5-formamidopyrimidine (fapy-guanine) were presented. In the absence of the external field the fapy-adenine is able to form pairs with all four canonical nucleic acid bases. However, pairs with guanine, cytosine and thymine the most stable are. Thus, t...

Since the description by Ralph, Connors, and Khorana (1) of the aggregation of deoxyguanylic oligonucleotides, it has been possible to ascribe many observations in the literature to this phenomenon. Sinsheimer (2) noted that guanine oligonucleotides displayed greater hypochromicity than other oligonucleotides, and Michelson (3) actually postulated hydrogen bonding for chemically synthesized pol...

Parallel tetramolecular quadruplexes may be formed with short oligodeoxynucleotides bearing a block of three or more guanines. We analyze the properties of sequence variants of parallel quadruplexes in which each guanine of the central block was systematically substituted with a different base. Twelve types of substitutions were assessed in more than 100 different sequences. We conducted a comp...

Substances known as nitrogen mustards turn into aziridinium ion through the intramolecular cyclization SN1. This ion reacts with the DNA preferably at the N7 position of the guanine, and because of this, it is an important antineoplastic agent. Based on this, the objective of this study is to quantify the interaction between the nitrogen mustard mechlorethamine and the guanine, using the NBO an...

Leucine rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) is a Parkinson's disease (PD) gene that encodes a large multidomain protein including both a GTPase and a kinase domain. GTPases often regulate kinases within signal transduction cascades, where GTPases act as molecular switches cycling between a GTP bound "on" state and a GDP bound "off" state. It has been proposed that LRRK2 kinase activity may be increase...

A new and enzyme-free electrochemical immunoassay protocol was developed for the sensitive electronic monitoring of neuron-specific enolase (NSE) on a monoclonal mouse anti-human NSE antibody (mAb)-modified glassy carbon electrode, using guanine-decorated graphene nanostructures (GGN) as nanotags. To construct such an enzyme-free immunoassay format, guanine and polyclonal rabbit anti-human NSE ...

Clustered guanine residues in DNA readily generate hairpin or a variety of tetrahelical structures. The myogenic determination protein MyoD was reported to bind to a tetrahelical structure of guanine-rich enhancer sequence of muscle creatine kinase (MCK) more tightly than to its target E-box motif [K. Walsh and A. Gualberto (1992) J. Biol. Chem., 267, 13714-13718], suggesting that tetraplex str...

Telomeres consist of short guanine-rich repeats. Guanine can be oxidized to 8-oxo-7,8-dihydroguanine (8-oxoG) and 2,6-diamino-4-hydroxy-5-formamidopyrimidine (FapyG). 8-oxoguanine DNA glycosylase (Ogg1) repairs these oxidative guanine lesions through the base excision repair (BER) pathway. Here we show that in Saccharomyces cerevisiae ablation of Ogg1p leads to an increase in oxidized guanine l...