Nucleic acid crystallization and X-ray crystallography facilitated by single selenium atom

2016, Volume 10, Issue 2

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Abstract

Keywords

Frontiers of Chemical Science and Engineering >> 2016, Volume 10, Issue 2 doi: 10.1007/s11705-016-1565-3

Nucleic acid crystallization and X-ray crystallography facilitated by single selenium atom

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. Department of Chemistry, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA.. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Molecular Biology, and Center for Computational and Integrative Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA 02114, USA.. College of Life Sciences, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China

Accepted: 2016-04-08 Available online: 2016-05-19

Abstract

X-ray crystallography is a powerful strategy for 3-D structure determination of macromolecules, such as nucleic acids and protein-nucleic acid complexes. However, the crystallization and phase determination are the major bottle-neck problems in crystallography. Recently we have successfully developed synthesis and strategy of selenium-derivatized nucleic acids (SeNA) for nucleic acid crystallography. SeNA might not only provide the rational strategies to solve the phase determination problem, but also offer a potential strategy to explore crystallization solutions.

Keywords

selenium ; DNA ; RNA ; nucleic acid ; crystallization

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