Grooving down the helix
Thursday, December 3, 2009 - 22:21
in Biology & Nature
A team of scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Harvard University, and the Indian Institute of Science has made a major step in understanding how molecules locate the genetic information in DNA that is necessary to carry out important biological processes. The research, published in the December 1, 2009 edition of Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, confirms that many proteins responsible for interacting at specific sites on DNA find their targets by sliding along one of the grooves of the DNA double helix in a spiraling fashion.