Definitions and Concepts

These notes are from the Spring 1995 Structural Biology class given at Berkeley.

Note: These are incomplete and I have no intention of completing them.

Base Pair: Two complementary bases, each on a different strand of DNA, which hydrogen-bond together. Their structure is described with respect to each other.
Base Step: 2 base pairs stacked on each other. Their structure is described with respect to the helical axis.
Hypochromicity: Reduction in UV absorbance due to base stacking. This can be used to measure the amount of secondary structure (native-form DNA) present in a renaturing or denaturing population

Last revised: 1995 May 12 by sev@byzantium.mckusick.com