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Related Concept Videos

Prochirality02:05

Prochirality

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The concept of prochirality leads to the nomenclature of the individual faces of a molecule and plays a crucial role in the enantioselective reaction. It is a concept where two or more achiral molecules react to produce chiral products. A typical process is the reaction of an achiral ketone to generate a chiral alcohol. Here, the achiral reactant reacts with an achiral reducing agent, sodium borohydride, to generate an equimolar mixture of the chiral enantiomers of the product. For example, an...
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Chirality in Nature02:30

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Chirality is the most intriguing yet essential facet of nature, governing life’s biochemical processes and precision. It can be observed from a snail shell pattern in a macroscopic world to an amino acid, the minutest building block of life. Most of the snails around the world have right-coiled shells because of the intrinsic chirality in their genes. All the amino acids present in the human body exist in an enantiomerically pure state, except for glycine - the sole achiral amino acid.
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Chirality02:25

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Chirality is a term that describes the lack of mirror symmetry in an object. In other words, chiral objects cannot be superposed on their mirror images. For example, our feet are chiral, as the mirror image of the left foot, the right foot, cannot be superposed on the left foot.
Chiral objects exhibit a sense of handedness when they interact with another chiral object. For example, our left foot can only fit in the left shoe and not in the right shoe. Achiral objects — objects that have...
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Chirality is most prevalent in carbon-based tetrahedral compounds, but this important facet of molecular symmetry extends to sp3-hybridized nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur centers, including trivalent molecules with lone pairs. Here, the lone pair behaves as a functional group in addition to the other three substituents to form an analogous tetrahedral center that can be chiral.
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The extent of chromatin compaction can be studied by staining chromatin using specific DNA binding dyes. Under the microscope, the dense-compacted regions that take up more dye are called heterochromatin. Heterochromatin is further classified into two forms – constitutive heterochromatin and facultative heterochromatin.
Constitutive heterochromatin: It is a highly compact region of chromatin that is mostly concentrated in the centromere and telomere. Unlike euchromatin, the amino acid at...
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Molecules that possess multiple chiral centers can afford a large number of stereoisomers. For instance, while some molecules like 2-butanol have one chiral center, defined as a tetrahedral carbon atom with four different substituents attached, several molecules like butane-2,3-diol have multiple chiral centers. A simple formula to predict the number of stereoisomers possible for a molecule with n chiral centers is 2n. However, there can be a lower number where some of the stereoisomers are...
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Design and Synthesis of a Reconfigurable DNA Accordion Rack
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Heterochiral Nucleic Acid Circuits.

Adam M Kabza1, Brian E Young1, Nandini Kundu1

  • 1Department of Chemistry, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843, United States.

Emerging Topics in Life Sciences
|January 27, 2021
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Synthetic biology advances with L-DNA/RNA, enantiomers of natural nucleic acids. These bio-orthogonal molecules offer enhanced stability for complex computations, interfacing seamlessly with living systems.

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Area of Science:

  • Synthetic Biology
  • Molecular Biology
  • Biochemistry

Background:

  • Nucleic acid stability is a key challenge for complex computations in synthetic biology.
  • Natural DNA/RNA are susceptible to degradation in biological environments.

Purpose of the Study:

  • Introduce L-DNA/RNA as stable, bio-orthogonal alternatives to natural nucleic acids.
  • Discuss the potential of heterochiral circuits for interfacing with biological systems.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized L-(deoxy)ribose nucleic acids (L-DNA/RNA), enantiomers of natural D-nucleotides.
  • Developed a strand-displacement methodology for information transfer between enantiomers.
  • Explored bio-orthogonal circuit design for interfacing with living systems.

Main Results:

  • L-oligonucleotides exhibit identical physical/chemical properties to D-oligonucleotides but are biologically inert.
  • Demonstrated a novel method for sequence transfer between L-DNA/RNA enantiomers.
  • Established the foundation for bio-orthogonal L-DNA/RNA circuits.

Conclusions:

  • L-DNA/RNA offers a robust solution for stable molecular computations in synthetic biology.
  • Heterochiral circuits enable seamless integration of synthetic systems with biological environments.
  • Further research is needed to engineer complex functionalities using these novel circuits.