In Neisseria meningitidis, uridine, deoxyuridine, cytosine, cytidine, or deoxycytidine could not be used by uracil-requiring mutants as pyrimidine sources. Consistent with these findings, only 5-fluorouracil of the different fluoropyrimidine bases and nucleosides showed any inhibitory effect on the growth of four prototrophic strains of N. meningitidis. Likewise, only radioactive uracil was rea...

Using (13)C spin relaxation NMR in combination with molecular dynamic (MD) simulations, we characterized internal motions within double-stranded DNA on the pico- to nano-second time scale. We found that the C-H vectors in all cytosine ribose moieties within the Dickerson-Drew dodecamer (5'-CGCGAATTCGCG-3') are subject to high amplitude motions, while the other nucleotides are essentially rigid....

Methylation of the DNA is an important epigenetic (i.e., not associated with alteration in the primary structure of the DNA) phenomenon, which plays important roles in regulation of gene expression, maintenance of genome integrity, and genomic imprinting. Although not only other nucleotides, but also proteins and lipids can be methylated, in the context of the present discussion, “methylation” ...

DNA methylation is an epigenetic mechanism for transcriptional regulation. The methylation process controls cellular differentiation and is defective in many diseases including cancer. Therefore, the development of a simple method for analysing cytosine methylation in a target gene is required. Here we report a conceptually new method for sequence-selective chemical modification of a single cyt...