Background & Objectives: Antisense peptide nucleic acids (PNA) that target growth essential genes show potent bactericidal properties without cell lysis. We considered the possibility that whether PNA treatment influence the bacteria total nucleic acids content and apply approach to develop a new delivery system to Dendritic cells (DCs). DCs are the most potent antigen presenting cells in th...

A data set of 89 protein-RNA complexes has been extracted from the Protein Data Bank, and the nucleic acid recognition sites characterized through direct contacts, accessible surface area, and secondary structure motifs. The differences between RNA recognition sites that bind to RNAs in functional classes has also been analyzed. Analysis of the complete data set revealed that van der Waals inte...

The stability of all single-base mismatched pairs between a peptide nucleic acid 11-mer and its complementary DNA has been quantified in terms of their melting temperature and compared with the limited amount of data published to date. The strength of the interaction was determined by an automated affinity-electrophoretic approach permitting the visualization, in real time, of hybridization bet...

Argonaute proteins repress gene expression and defend against foreign nucleic acids using short RNAs or DNAs to specify the correct target RNA or DNA sequence. We have developed single-molecule methods to analyze target binding and cleavage mediated by the Argonaute:guide complex, RISC. We find that both eukaryotic and prokaryotic Argonaute proteins reshape the fundamental properties of RNA:RNA...

Aptamers are nucleic acid molecules selected in vitro to bind small molecules, peptides, proteins or even other nucleic acids with high affinity and specificity. They offer a unique opportunity to extend our knowledge on the basic principles of nucleic acid architecture and ligand recognition. Despite their probable absence in organisms, RNA aptamers are likely to play an important role in mole...

A consideration of the earlier investigations of the nucleic acids would lead us to the conclusion that these substances yield among their hydrolytic products four purin derivatives, namely, xanthin, hypoxanthin, guanin, and adenin. Of these four bases hypoxanthin was the first discovered in this connection and was for a long time looked upon as the most constant in its occurrence, and, therefo...

We use a combination of calorimetric and volumetric techniques to detect and to characterize the thermodynamic changes that accompany helix-to-coil transitions for five polymeric nucleic acid duplexes. Our calorimetric measurements reveal that melting of the duplexes is accompanied by positive changes in heat capacity (DeltaCP) of similar magnitude, with an average DeltaCP value of 64.6 +/- 21....