TY - JOUR

T1 - Magnesium cofactor produces unpaired electrons confined by triplet nucleotide loops in a full-turn DNA fragment

AU - Tulub, Alexander A.

PY - 2016

Y1 - 2016

N2 - 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

AB - 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

KW - magnesium cofactor

KW - DNA molecule

KW - unpaired electrons

KW - Rashba effect

KW - topological phase

KW - amino acids.

U2 - 10.1039/C6RA18673D

DO - 10.1039/C6RA18673D

M3 - Article

VL - 6

SP - 81666

EP - 81671

JO - RSC Advances

JF - RSC Advances

SN - 2046-2069

ER -