Current Organic Chemistry - Volume 5, Issue 8, 2001

Nucleic acids exist in a number of structural states that may comprise one to four strands. Common features involve base-stacking and pairing of complementary bases via H-bonded interactions, although a wide variety of pairing motifs are found in higher-order structures. Another property is the marked flexibility of nucleic acids reflected in their solution behaviour, thermodynamic stability and interactions with proteins and s Read More

DNA polymerase I enzymes have served as model systems to study the mechanism of template-directed DNA polymerization. This process requires that the enzyme cycles through a series of conformational changes, each cycle leading to the incorporation of a nucleotide to the primer strand of the DNA. The kinetics of nucleotide incorporation has been extensively studied leading to the definition of specific steps along the cycle. Read More

The replication reaction provides the molecular source for mutation, selection and evolution in biology. This reaction also requires two additional stages, transcription and translation, functioning cooperatively, to construct the materials necessary to transfer the genome accurately to progeny. These three stages together constitute biologys Central Dogma, a term that highlights their presence in all autonomous replicating orga Read More

Gene expression is a central phenomenon in all organisms. The first step in the expression of a gene is the transcription of the DNA to generate a messenger RNA, which is subsequently translated to a protein. In response to cellular and environmental cues regulatory proteins, known as transcriptional activators or repressors, either enhance or inhibit transcription of specific genes. Here, a summary of our current unders Read More