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Updated: Aug 8, 2026

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Analyzing and Building Nucleic Acid Structures with 3DNA
Published on: April 26, 2013
Abstract:
Models of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) having chain directions opposite to those of the Watson and Crick model offer strikingly different alternatives for DNA structures. Satisfactory models of the B and C forms of DNA have been built. Left-handed models readily form by twisting right-handed ones, and models can be bent into tight supercoils.
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Two structural features of the DNA molecule provide a basis for the mechanisms of heredity: the four nucleotide bases and its double-stranded nature. The Watson-Crick model of double-helical DNA structure, proposed in 1952, drew heavily upon the X-ray crystallography work of researchers Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins. Watson, Crick, and Wilkins jointly received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work in 1962. Franklin was, controversially, excluded from the prize for...
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Two structural features of the DNA molecule provide a basis for the mechanisms of heredity: the four nucleotide bases and its double-stranded nature. The Watson-Crick model of double-helical DNA structure, proposed in 1952, drew heavily upon the X-ray crystallography work of researchers Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins. Watson, Crick, and Wilkins jointly received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work in 1962. Franklin was, controversially, excluded from the prize for...
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