DNA stability: Difference between revisions

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(New page: Although DNA is generally viewed as a stable molecule, many conditions can cause loss of DNA bases or strand breakage. ==Depurination== * Depurination involves the loss of purine bases f...)
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Revision as of 16:35, 17 April 2007

Although DNA is generally viewed as a stable molecule, many conditions can cause loss of DNA bases or strand breakage.

Depurination

  • Depurination involves the loss of purine bases forming abasic sites.
  • Depurination is one of the two limiting factors in chemical synthesis of long DNA oligos (the other is coupling efficiency).
  • DNA under physiological conditions has been found to depurinate at a rate of [math]\displaystyle{ 4\cdot 10^{-9} }[/math]/sec at 70C and pH 7.4 [1].

Deamination

  • Cytosine can be spontaneously deaminated to form uracil.

Strand cleavage

  • Abasic sites are alkali-labile. Under mildly alkaline conditions, β-elimination occurs which nicks 3' to the abasic site leaving a 5'-P on the downstream fragment
  • Under strong alkaline conditions, δ-elimination will occur after β-elimination which completely removes the abasic site leaving a 3'-P on the upstream fragment and a 5'-P on the downstream fragment

References

  1. Lindahl T and Nyberg B. Rate of depurination of native deoxyribonucleic acid. Biochemistry. 1972 Sep 12;11(19):3610-8. DOI:10.1021/bi00769a018 | PubMed ID:4626532 | HubMed [lindahl72]
  2. Frederico LA, Kunkel TA, and Shaw BR. Cytosine deamination in mismatched base pairs. Biochemistry. 1993 Jul 6;32(26):6523-30. DOI:10.1021/bi00077a005 | PubMed ID:8329382 | HubMed [frederico93]

All Medline abstracts: PubMed | HubMed