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In biochemistry, denaturation is a process in which proteins or nucleic acids lose folded structure present in their native state due to various factors, including application of some external stress or compound, such as a strong acid or base, a concentrated inorganic salt, an organic solvent (e.g., alcohol or chloroform), agitation and radiation, or heat. [3]
Single-stranded DNA or RNA tends to fold up into molecules with complex shapes and migrate through the gel in a complicated manner based on their tertiary structure. Therefore, agents that disrupt the hydrogen bonds, such as sodium hydroxide or formamide, are used to denature the nucleic acids and cause them to behave as long rods again. [26]
An example is the H 2 O (water) molecule, which can gain a proton to form the hydronium ion, H 3 O +, or lose a proton, leaving the hydroxide ion, OH −. The relative ability of a molecule to give up a proton is measured by its pK a value. A low pK a value indicates that the compound is acidic and will easily give up its proton to a base.
A chaotropic agent is a molecule in water solution that can disrupt the hydrogen bonding network between water molecules (i.e. exerts chaotropic activity).This has an effect on the stability of the native state of other molecules in the solution, mainly macromolecules (proteins, nucleic acids) by weakening the hydrophobic effect.
where is the stability of the protein in water and [D] is the denaturant concentration. Thus the analysis of denaturation data with this model requires 7 parameters: Δ G w {\displaystyle \Delta G_{w}} , Δ n {\displaystyle \Delta n} , k , and the slopes and intercepts of the folded and unfolded state baselines.
DNA denaturation can also be used to detect sequence differences between two different DNA sequences. DNA is heated and denatured into single-stranded state, and the mixture is cooled to allow strands to rehybridize. Hybrid molecules are formed between similar sequences and any differences between those sequences will result in a disruption of ...
DNA, however, requires deoxyribose, which is missing the 2'-hydroxyl (-OH group) on the ribose. The reaction to remove this -OH is catalyzed by ribonucleotide reductase. This enzyme converts NDPs (nucleoside-diphosphate) to dNDPs (deoxynucleoside-diphosphate). The nucleotides must be in the diphosphate form for the reaction to occur. [1]
To precipitate the DNA out of the water, the negatively charged phosphate groups of the DNA backbone are neutralized by the addition of positively charged ions from a salt. But because of the high polarity of water, illustrated by its high dielectric constant of 80.1 (at 20 °C), the positively charged ions are shielded and unable to interact ...