The concept of nucleic acid sequence base alternations is presented. The number of base alterations for the sequences of different length is established. The definition of "enlarged similarity" of nucleic acids sequences on the basis of sequence base alterations is introduced. Mutual information between sequences is used as a quantitative measure of enlarged similarity for two compared sequence...

Five cyclic nitrosamines, nitrosoazetidine, nitrosopyrrolidine, nitrosopiperidine, nitrosomorpholine, and dinitrosopiperazine, labeled with deuterium and tritium, were injected into rats and then the nucleic acids of the liver were examined for the presence of alkylated bases derived from the nitrosamines. A semiquantitative mass spectrometric method able to detect 25 ng of a base was used. No ...

A statistical method is developed to estimate the maximum amplitude of base pair fluctuations in a three dimensional mesoscopic model for nucleic acids. The thermal vibrations around helix diameter are viewed as Brownian motion particle embedded stable helical structure. probability return initial position computed, function time, by integrating over paths consistent with physical properties po...

Recently, KOD and its related DNA polymerases have been used for preparing various modified nucleic acids, including not only base-modified nucleic acids, but also sugar-modified ones, such as bridged/locked nucleic acid (BNA/LNA) which would be promising candidates for nucleic acid drugs. However, thus far, reasons for the effectiveness of KOD DNA polymerase for such purposes have not been cle...

Base extrusion is a major structural feature at the junction between B- and Z-DNA (the B-Z junction) where a base pair is broken, and the two bases are extruded from the double helix. Despite the demonstration of base extrusion at the B-Z junction, it is not clear whether a similar base extrusion occurs at other types of junctions involving the left-handed Z conformation. Here, we investigate s...

Nucleic acids have become a powerful tool in nanotechnology because of their conformational polymorphism. However, lack of a medium in which nucleic acid structures exhibit long-term stability has been a bottleneck. Ionic liquids (ILs) are potential solvents in the nanotechnology field. Hydrated ILs, such as choline dihydrogen phosphate (choline dhp) and deep eutectic solvent (DES) prepared fro...

To investigate nucleic acid base pairing and stacking via atom-specific mutagenesis and crystallography, we have synthesized for the first time the 6-Se-deoxyguanosine phosphoramidite and incorporated it into DNAs via solid-phase synthesis with a coupling yield over 97%. We found that the UV absorption of the Se-DNAs red-shifts over 100 nm to 360 nm (epsilon = 2.3 x 10(4) M(-1) cm(-1)), the Se-...