Title

CYCLOHEXANE AR

On sugars and conformations. Quote from my friend Jon, who is much more knowledgable than myself about these matters:

“In double helices – B–DNA (the classic double helix) basically has sugars with a south pucker. Double-stranded RNA, and also A-DNA (found in other sequences/conditions) basically has sugars with a north pucker.

Interestingly, kinases that are needed to activate nucleoside drugs (AZT and many others) recognize the puckers and so the pucker of a nucleoside can be key to allowing it to be activated as the triphosphate and incorporated into DNA. Victor Marquez of the NCI (NIH) is the authority in this area of nucleoside conformations and their biological activity.”