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First description of a triple DNA helix in vacuum

By 20 de April de 2012November 18th, 2020No Comments
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 20.04.2012

First description of a triple DNA helix in vacuum

A team of researchers at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) –based in the Barcelona Science Park– and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) have managed for the first time to extract trustworthy structural information from a triple helix DNA in gas phase, that is to say in conditions in which DNA is practically in a vacuum. The study appears today in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), one of the journals with greatest impact in chemistry.


“Until now these special DNA structures were almost impossible to detect and it was not known whether they preserved structural memory in solution when they were evaporated. With this study we have characterized this structure and demonstrated that it maintains a surprising memory of its previous biological environment, aqueous solution, in which it is normally very difficult to characterize”, explains Modesto Orozco, principal investigator at IRB Barcelona, senior professor at the University of Barcelona and director of Life Sciences at the BSC.

Orozco’s team has combined computational simulation techniques with experimental validation through mass spectrometry. This was the last structure pending to complete the atlas of classical DNA structures in gas phase, work that has taken Dr. Orozco’s group more than ten years of dedication.