Re: What does hydrogen bonding have to do with DNA?

Hydrogren bonding has to do with the way the bas pairs come together.


It has recently been shown (by molecular modeling calculations) that when 
the hydrogens responsible for forming the hydrogen bonds between the pairs 
are substituted with Flourine that the bases still match up in the same 
order.  This lead the researchers to believe that it isn't hydrogen bonding 
that decides how the base pairs match up, rather it might be structurally 
related to what atoms are in the right positions.



Admin note:  I think it is important to stress that hydrogen bonding is
still thought to be very important in determining how the nucleotides 
anneal to one another in double-stranded DNA, even though experiments like
the one discussed above are testing this model.