The B-DNA curvature arising from pairing between nucleotides of the two curved complemen-tary DNA strands affects the oxidation number of magnesium cofactor. When the reading frame (RF) spans over three paired nucleotides (5’-3’ and 3’-5’ strands), the magnesium cations on both strands become singly charged. This produces two radical pairs (RPs) with four electrons – two electrons on Mg+ and two electrons on two complementary nucleotide triplets. Thanks to curvature and hyperfine coupling (interaction between the active nuclear spin on the 31P atom of each nucleotide and the RP electrons), the four electrons of the two RPs lose their initial energy equality. The two electrons (the first RP) collapse forming the low energy inactive singlet state while the other two electrons (the second RP) remain uncoupled. These two electrons slowly ro-tate over the triplet nucleotide frame in opposite directions (the Rashba effect) forming two con-duction loops. The shift of the RF to the next three complementary nucleotide
Язык оригиналаанглийский
Страницы (с-по)81666-81671
ЖурналRSC Advances
Том6
DOI
СостояниеОпубликовано - 2016

ID: 7579957