PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY OF NUCLEIC ACIDS

The Watson-Crick double helix of DNA was first revealed in 1953. Since then a wide range of physical chemical methods have been applied to DNA and to its more versatile relative RNAto determine their structures and functions. My major goal is to predict the folded structure of any RNA from its sequence. We have used bulk and single-molecule measurements of thermodynamics and kinetics, plus various spectroscopic methods (UVabsorption, optical rotation, circular dichroism, circular intensity differential scattering, fluorescence, NMR) to approach this goal.