fmbpt submitted, created time 1 year 4 months (www3.interscience.wiley.com)

The hydrogen bond in DNA base pairs is, at variance with widespread belief, not a pure or essentially electrostatic phenomenon. Instead, as follows from our quantum chemical analyses, it has a substantial charge-transfer character caused by donor–acceptor orbital interactions (between O or N lone pairs and N-H sigma* acceptor orbitals) that are of the same order of magnitude as the electrostatic term. Polarization in the pi-electron system (i.e., "resonance assistance") provides an additional stabilizing term

1 comment | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: Molecular interactions Base-pairing similarities Charge transfer Density functional calculations DNA structures Hydrogen bonds Resonance assistance Orbital interactions Electronic structure Watson-Crick base pairs