Deprotonation mechanism of a single-stranded DNA i-motif

We present the detailed deprotonation mechanism of a fully protonated DNA i-motif as studied by all-atom Molecular Dynamics simulations. The associated unfolding of the i-motif is driven by the application of the Metadynamics method. The release of two protons, which stabilize the hemi-protonated cy...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:RSC advances 2014-01, Vol.4 (33), p.17110-17113
Main Authors: Smiatek, Jens, Heuer, Andreas
Format: Article
Language:English
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We present the detailed deprotonation mechanism of a fully protonated DNA i-motif as studied by all-atom Molecular Dynamics simulations. The associated unfolding of the i-motif is driven by the application of the Metadynamics method. The release of two protons, which stabilize the hemi-protonated cytosine pairs in the native i-motif, can be identified as the initial step for the occurrence of the unfolding process. By a systematic analysis of the proton motion, we are able to validate a two-step deprotonation mechanism. Our findings are in excellent agreement to experimental results that have been recently published.
ISSN:2046-2069
2046-2069
DOI:10.1039/C4RA01420K