Ground and Excited State Dynamics Determine Thymine Dimer Formation in DNA

Who:  Yu-Kay Law - (Kohler lab, OSU)
Where:  1080 Physics Research Building, Robert Smith Seminar Room
When:  Monday, November 9, 2009 at 02:30
Type:  Biophysics Seminar

Description: Cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers have been shown to be the most prevalent mutagenic photolesions found upon UV photoirradiation of DNA. Of these, the thymine dimer is often used as a model system for biophysical studies due to their high formation and equilibrium yields. We will show that nearest-neighbor approaches to evaluating sequence-dependent dimer formation yields are appropriate, and that these cannot simply be evaluated in terms of ground state conformational considerations, as evaluated using MD simulations.