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  • Milestones
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Milestone 23

Probing the molecular heart of life

Challenging nucleic acid structures

Nature volume 511, pages 20–21 (2014)Cite this article

Although the structure of DNA had been described by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953 (Milestone 11), there actually were no crystallographic data within that paper. The first DNA crystal structure — reported 26 years later — was Alex Rich's left-handed Z-form; the first B-form DNA structure was reported in 1982. Instead, the first report of a polynucleotide crystal structure was that of the yeast transfer RNA (tRNA) for phenylalanine, also by Rich's group, published in 1973. The tRNA was found to adopt an L shape, with two right-handed, double-stranded stems. One end of the L harboured the amino acid that was to be added to a growing peptide chain, while the anticodon loop that base-pairs with the messenger RNA (mRNA) in the ribosome was at the other end.

The next major development in nucleic acid structural biology lay in determining protein–nucleic acid complexes. Aaron Klug and colleagues provided a considerable advance when they solved the structure of the 206-kDa nucleosome core particle in 1984. This 7-Å structure, representative of the basic packing unit of the eukaryotic genome, revealed several novel features, including a periodic kinking of the DNA as it contacted the octamer core and the degree of compression of the inward-facing major and minor grooves of the DNA superhelix.

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References

ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPERS

  1. Kim, S. H. et al. Three-dimensional structure of a yeast phenylalanine transfer RNA: folding of the polynucleotide chain. Science 179, 285–288 (1973)

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FURTHER READING

  1. Wang, A. H. et al. Molecular structure of a left-handed double helical DNA fragment at atomic resolution. Nature 282, 680–686 (1979)

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  2. Wing, R. et al. Crystal structure analysis of a complete turn of B-DNA. Nature 287, 755–758 (1980)

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  1. Senior Editor, Nature,

    Angela K. Eggleston

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  1. Angela K. Eggleston
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Eggleston, A. Probing the molecular heart of life. Nature 511 (Suppl 7509), 20–21 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13370

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