Concepedia

Abstract

The availability of chemically synthesized oligonucleotides of defined sequence has changed the nature of nucleic acid structural studies from fibers to single-crystal X-ray analyses. Studies on nucleic acid fibers have intrinsic limitations because their X-ray diffraction patterns are of only limited resolution; the amount of structural information one can obtain from them is correspondingly limited. Solution of a fiber diffraction pattern makes it impossible to obtain many interesting structural details.