Recent studies on the fate of labeled dietary purines in the rat have shown t,hat dietary adenine is a precursor of t,he adenine and of the guanine of tissue nucleic acids (l), but that guanine (2), hypoxanthine (3), and xanthine (3) are not utilized for nucleic acid synthesis. Similar experiments have shown that the pyrimidines, uracil, thymine (2), and cytosine (4) are not incorporated into t...

With few exceptions, experimental success in molecular biology is dependent upon specific, discriminating, and persistent hybridization events involving synthetic oligonucleotides and their complementary target sequences. While unmodified oligodeoxynucleotides will routinely form desired DNA:DNA and DNA:RNA duplexes, synthesis of various modifications that confer enhanced high-affinity recognit...

ARTIFICIAL AND NATURAL NUCLEIC ACIDSELF ASSEMBLING SYSTEMS byMARCUS WOODAugust 2011Advisor: Dr. John SantaLucia, Jr., Dr. David RuedaMajor: ChemistryDegree: Doctor of Philosophy Nucleic acids are good candidates for nanomachine construction. They participatein all the processes of life, and so can function as structural building blocks and dynamiccatalysts. Howev...

Multiple lines of evidence support the hypothesis that the early evolution of life was dominated by RNA, which can both transfer information from generation to generation through replication directed by base-pairing, and carry out biochemical activities by folding into functional structures. To understand how life emerged from prebiotic chemistry we must therefore explain the steps that led to ...

The overall metabolism of purines was studied in tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) mesophyll protoplasts. Metabolic pathways were studied by measuring the conversion of radioactive adenine, adenosine, hypoxanthine and guanine into purine ribonucleotides, ribonucleosides, bases and nucleic acid constituents. Adenine was extensively deaminated to hypoxanthine, whereupon it was also converted into AMP a...