Nucleic acid crystallization and X-ray crystallography facilitated by single selenium atom

Abstract

X-ray crystallography is a powerful strategy for 3-D structure determination of macromolecules, such as nucleic acids and protein-nucleic acid complexes. However, the crystallization and phase determination are the major bottle-neck problems in crystallography. Recently we have successfully developed synthesis and strategy of selenium-derivatized nucleic acids (SeNA) for nucleic acid crystallography. SeNA might not only provide the rational strategies to solve the phase determination problem, but also offer a potential strategy to explore crystallization solutions.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

selenium / DNA / RNA / nucleic acid / crystallization

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