Sequence-specific assignments and their use in NMR studies of DNA structure

Abstract

There has been a surge of recent interest, reflected by a sharp increase in the number of publications, in the area of high-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) studies of DNA. The goal of many of these studies is to monitor the structure of biologically important DNA sequences directly in solution; the impetus for such studies was the realization, from early single-crystal X-ray structures, that nearest-neighbor context effects are a major determinant of local structure in short double-helical DNAs (Dickerson & Drew, 1981; Dickerson, 1983). Thus, instead of the previously assumed regular averaged structure of the double helix derived from fibre diffraction analysis, the more interesting concept emerged that specific sequence-dependent distortions from ‘classical’ DNA structure might be responsible for the recognition of such sequences by a variety of ligands such as repressors, polymerases, drugs, etc.