First stable simulations of DNA crystals

A research team has presented the first stable simulations of DNA crystals, according to a study published in the journal Chem –part of the publisher Cell- and led by Modesto Orozco, Professor from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biomedicine of the Faculty of Biology of the UB, and head of a research group of the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) and the platform Bioinformatics Barcelona (BIB).

The new study shows the most detailed description so far about the properties of crystal systems with DNA at an atomic scale. This scientific milestone enables explaining the importance of chemical additives which are experimentally used to reach suitable crystallization conditions to get stable crystals in the laboratories.

According to Pablo D. Dans, postdoctoral researcher at IRB Barcelona, “the first to benefit from the study is the community of computational physicists and the chemists and biophysicists, who now have a clear protocol and reference to get stable simulations of DNA crystals”.

According to Professor Modesto Orozco, head of the Molecular Modelling and Bioinformatics laboratory of IRB Barcelona, “in the long run, the simulation of several crystals obtained in under different experimental conditions should allow us to predict the effect of a certain chemical additive, and guide crystallographers in their experiments, reducing the costs and the time to get the crystals”.

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