High-Resolution NMR of DNA and Drug-DNA Interactions

The advantage of NMR over most other spectroscopic techniques lies in the ability to gain structural and dynamic information at atomic resolution. Every nucleus with spin gives rise to a signal that is characterized by a number of parameters (chemical shift, J-couplings, relaxation data, and NOE connectivities) that can be used to obtain quite detailed structural information about the molecule under study. They can also be used to determine kinetic properties, for example, the interconversion rates of different conformations of a molecule and the exchange rate of free with bound ligand on a macromolecule. NMR has been widely used to study both static and dynamic aspects of DNA structure and drug-DNA interactions.