Dresden 2006 – scientific programme
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AKB: Biologische Physik
AKB 30: Poster Session I
AKB 30.32: Poster
Monday, March 27, 2006, 15:30–18:00, P1
Hydrogen Forces in DNA — •Hauke Schollmeyer1,2, Youli Li2, and Cyrus Safinya2 — 1Institute for X-Ray Physics, Georg-August-University, Friedrich-Hund-Platz 1, 37077 Göttingen — 2Materials Rasearch Laboratory, University of California at Santa Barbara, CA, USA
It has been found that DNA has two predominant conformations, both of which are a double helix, existing in nature: the B form, characterized by a pitch of 34 Å, a diameter of 20 Å, and a rise per base pair of 3.4 Å; and the A form, characterized by a pitch of 28 Å, a diameter of 23 Å, and a rise per base pair of 2.6 Å. It is well accepted that DNA undergoes the conformational change by 75% in relative humidity at room temperature; however, little is known about the exact position in relative humidity space of the transition, or even the nature of the transition itself. DNA is also known to undergo a transition from a 2-D hexagonal to a 3-D hexagonal, but the nature of this has not been carefully studied. It has been reported that DNA exists in vivo in concentrations relevant to these phase transitions, so the study performed in the presented work has direct biological relevance. This study has further implications in understanding self interactions among neighboring DNA molecules. We have performed experiments using x-ray fiber diffraction to further examine the phase behavior.