Erwin Chargaff was one of the more interesting and colourful figures of the historic decade that heralded the proposal of the double helical structure of DNA by Watson and Crick in 1953. In describing Chargaff's important contribution to the study of DNA, particularly its base composition, this article seeks to suggest why, despite his substantial achievements, he failed to anticipate some of t...

We report the structure of clusters of 2,4-diaminopyrimidine with 3,7-dimethylxanthine (theobromine) in the gas phase determined by IR-UV double resonance spectroscopy in both the near-IR and mid-IR regions in combination with ab initio computations. These clusters represent potential alternate nucleobase pairs, geometrically equivalent to guanine-cytosine. We have found the four lowest energy ...

The year 2016 marks the centenary of the birth of Francis Crick (1916-2004), who made outstanding contributions to genetics and neuroscience. In 1953, in a collaborative study, Francis Crick and James Watson discovered the DNA double helix, and in 1962 they and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the Noble Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Crick subsequently became very interested in neuroscience, part...

In this paper, we compare the computational power of two-way Watson–Crick automata and Quantum finite automata. The language $${\text{L}} = \left\{ {\left. {{\text{xx}}} \right|{\text{x}} \in {{\mathbf{a}},{\mathbf{b}}} \right\}^{*} } \right\}$$ is accepted by but not quantum

The traditional Watson-Crick base pairs in DNA may occasionally adopt a Hoogsteen conformation, with a different organization of hydrogen bonds. Previous crystal structures have shown that the Hoogsteen conformation is favored in alternating AT sequences of DNA. Here we present new data for a different sequence, d(ATTAAT)2, which is also found in the Hoogsteen conformation. Thus we demonstrate ...

Ni-salen-DNA conjugates, prepared by template-directed synthesis, targeted oxidative adduct formation and strand scission at deoxyguanosine sites in complementary DNA strands of Watson-Crick duplexes.