B-DNA
Unknown Year, Unknown Dimensions
Geis illustrates B-DNA in blue looking from above, through the double helix. The two bases on top are highlighted in white to distinguish one individual section of the layered scene.
Used with permission from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (www.hhmi.org). All rights reserved.
Related PDB Entry: 2N0l
Experimental Structure Citation
To be published. Authors: Miears, H.L., Gruber, D.R., Hoppins, J.J., Kiryutin, A.S., Kasymov, R.D., Yurkovskaya, A.V., Zharkov, D.O., Smirnov, S.L.
About B-DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is responsible for storing genetic information and contains all of the information that an organism needs to develop, grow, and survive. The DNA of an offspring contains information from the parent generation. The DNA B-helix is the most common form of DNA. It exists under neutral pH and physiological salt conditions ("B-Form, A-Form, Z-Form of DNA" website). It is right-handed and consists of 10 base pairs per turn.
DNA is a chain of nucleotides, which are each composed of a deoxyribose, a phosphate group, and a base (adenine, thymine, guanine, or cytosine). The structure of DNA is a double-helix and base-pairing occurs between adenine and thymine and between guanine and cytosine (according to Chargaff’s rules). Adenine/thymine base-pairing consists of two hydrogen bonds and guanine/cytosine base-pairing consists of three hydrogen bonds. The sugar-phosphate backbone is closer in some portions of DNA.
Text References
Major and minor grooves. Boston University. URL: https://tandem.bu.edu/knex/grooves.knex.html
B-Form, A-Form, Z-Form of DNA. University of California, Davis. URL: http://biowiki.ucdavis.edu/Core/Genetics/Unit_I%3A_Genes%2C_Nucleic_Acids%2C_Genomes_and_Chromosomes/2%3A_Structures_of_nucleic_acids/B-Form%2C_A-Form%2C_Z-Form_of_DNA
Zheng G., Lu X. J., & Olson W. K. (2009). Web 3DNA—a web server for the analysis, reconstruction, and visualization of three-dimensional nucleic-acid structures. Nuc. Acids Res. 37 (Web Server Issue), W240-W246