The handedness of DNA: an unheralded connection.

Science is about making connections. Plenty are on show in Watson and Crick’s famous 1953 article on the structure of DNA[1] but often with the tersest of explanations. Take for example their statement “Both chains follow right-handed helices“. Where did that come from? This post will explore the subtle implications of that remark (and how in one aspect they did not quite get it right!).


The absolute configuration of natural tartaric acid.





Well, now that a good accuracy wavefunction for e.g. d(CGCG) is possible, what might one do with it? Well, the chiro-optical properties might be calculated[9] including the optical rotation at a specified frequency, or e.g. the electronic circular dichroism spectrum. Such properties are normally computed only for much smaller molecules. Watch this space (or the journals).



  1. J.D. WATSON, and F.H.C. CRICK, "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid", Nature, vol. 171, pp. 737-738, 1953.
  2. "The complementary structure of deoxyribonucleic acid", Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A. Mathematical and Physical Sciences, vol. 223, pp. 80-96, 1954.
  3. R.S. Cahn, C. Ingold, and V. Prelog, "Specification of Molecular Chirality", Angewandte Chemie International Edition in English, vol. 5, pp. 385-415, 1966.
  4. J.M. BIJVOET, A.F. PEERDEMAN, and A.J. van BOMMEL, "Determination of the Absolute Configuration of Optically Active Compounds by Means of X-Rays", Nature, vol. 168, pp. 271-272, 1951.
  5. D.H.R. Barton, "83. Interactions between non-bonded atoms, and the structure of cis-decalin", Journal of the Chemical Society (Resumed), pp. 340, 1948.
  6. F. Crick, J.C. Wang, and W.R. Bauer, "Is DNA really a double helix?", Journal of Molecular Biology, vol. 129, pp. 449-461, 1979.
  7. R. Wing, H. Drew, T. Takano, C. Broka, S. Tanaka, K. Itakura, and R.E. Dickerson, "Crystal structure analysis of a complete turn of B-DNA", Nature, vol. 287, pp. 755-758, 1980.
  9. S. Ding, A. Kolbanovskiy, A. Durandin, C. Crean, V. Shafirovich, S. Broyde, and N.E. Geacintov, "Absolute configurations of DNA lesions determined by comparisons of experimental ECD and ORD spectra with DFT calculations", Chirality, vol. 21, pp. E231-E241, 2009.


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The handedness of DNA: an unheralded connection.





  5. Henry Rzepa says:





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