The highly concentrated liquid-crystalline phase of DNA is columnar hexagonal

THE DNA molecule is extremely compacted in bacteria, in cell nuclei, sperm heads and virus capsids. These interactions between DNA molecules are important to our understanding of chromatin condensation. DNA forms multiple liquid-crystalline phases whose nature depends on the polymer concentration 1–...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature (London) 1989-06, Vol.339 (6227), p.724-726
Main Authors: Livolant, F, Levelut, A. M, Doucet, J, Benoit, J. P
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analytical, structural and metabolic biochemistry
Biological and medical sciences
Crystallization
DNA - ultrastructure
Dna, deoxyribonucleoproteins
Freeze Etching
Freeze Fracturing
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humanities and Social Sciences
letter
Microscopy, Electron
Models, Molecular
multidisciplinary
Nucleic Acid Conformation
Nucleic acids
Particle Accelerators
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
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:THE DNA molecule is extremely compacted in bacteria, in cell nuclei, sperm heads and virus capsids. These interactions between DNA molecules are important to our understanding of chromatin condensation. DNA forms multiple liquid-crystalline phases whose nature depends on the polymer concentration 1–12 , and it has been suggested that the highly concentrated phase of 50-nm DNA molecules is two-dimensionally ordered and smectic-like 13 . We rule out this smectic hypothesis and demonstrate by polarizing microscopy, electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction that this phase is characterized by a columnar longitudinal order and a hexagonal lateral order, with intermolecular distances ranging from 2.8 to 4.0 nm depending on the DNA concentration.
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/339724a0