Sodium bisulfite reacts with cytosine and 5-methylcytosine, forming the 5,6-dihydrosulfonate adducts which deaminate to the uracil and thymine adducts, respectively. At alkaline pH, the sulfonate groups are then released, generating uracil and thymine. In DNA, the resulting G:U and G:T base mismatches generated are potential sites of mutagenesis. Using a human damage-specific DNA binding protei...

Fagin et al. characterized those symmetric Boolean functions which can be computed by small AND/OR circuits of constant depth and unbounded fan-in. Here we provide a similar characterization for d-perceptrons | AND/OR circuits of constant depth and unbounded fan-in with a single MAJORITY gate at the output. We show that a symmetric function has small (quasipolynomial, or 2 log O(1) n size) d-pe...

Circular dichroism (CD) and UV absorption data showed that poly[d(G-C)] (at 0.09M NaCl, 0.01M Na+ (phosphate), 20 degrees C) underwent two conformational transitions upon lowering of the pH by the addition of HCl. The first transition was complete at about pH 3.0. The second transition was complete upon lowering the pH to 2.6 or upon raising the temperature, at pH 3.0, to about 40 degrees C. Th...

The identification of left handed or Z-DNA in solutions of poly d(GC) in high salt suggests that left handed DNA may exist in biological systems if stabilized at lower ionic strength. In the present study we show that binding of polyarginine to the Z form of poly d(GC) results in a protein-Z-DNA complex stable near physiological ionic strength. The percentage of Z-DNA in the low salt polyargini...

Abstract This study describes the preparation, physicochemical characterization and biological studies of polymeric delivery systems proanthocyanidins (PCAN) extracted from Pelargonium sidoides for potential use as wound dressings. In this 20 wt% PCAN demonstrated good antimicrobial activity against Staphylococcus aures, a gram-positive pathogen. Poly(D,L-lactide) atactic poly[(R,S)-3-hydroxybu...

Somatic mutations in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) displacement loop (D-loop) region have been frequently detected in various human cancers. In a previous study, we identified a polyplasmic 260-bp tandem duplication and triplication mutation in the mtDNA D-loop of one gastric cancer. In the present study, we adopted a more sensitive back-to-back polymerase chain reaction method to screen for th...

The beneficial health effects of cranberries have been attributed to their (poly)phenol content. Recent studies have investigated the absorption, metabolism and excretion of cranberry (poly)phenols; however, little is known about whether they follow a dose response in vivo at different levels of intake. An acute double-blind randomized controlled trial in 10 healthy men with cranberry juices co...

A dimeric neomycin-neomycin conjugate 3 with a flexible linker, 2,2'-(ethylenedioxy)bis(ethylamine), has been synthesized and characterized. Dimer 3 can selectively bind to AT-rich DNA duplexes with high affinity. Biophysical studies have been performed between 3 and different nucleic acids with varying base composition and conformation by using ITC (isothermal calorimetry), CD (circular dichro...