Nucleic acids

Nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) are polymers of nucleotides – each nucleotide consists of a pentose sugar, a phosphate group and one of the nitrogenous bases (purines and pyrimidines). Nucleic acids function in encoding, transmitting and expressing genetic information in either the double-stranded form (mostly for DNA) or in single-stranded form (mostly for RNA).

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  • News & Views |

    A fungal ten-eleven translocation (TET) dioxygenase homolog, CcTet, is found to have both 5-methylcytosine (5mC) and N6-methyladenine (6mA) demethylase activity. Structure-based engineering of CcTet yielded a 6mA-specific demethylase, offering a useful tool for the manipulation and functional study of 6mA.

    • Sisi Li
    •  & Jiamu Du
    Nature Chemical Biology, 1-2

  • Editorial |

    Lipid nanoparticles are going into billions of arms in the form of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, delivering, at last, on the promise of nanotechnology to revolutionize drug delivery. Revolutions have the ability to alter the course of history. In the case of nanotech-based drug delivery, with many promising applications being explored, it looks like lipid nanoparticles have done just that.

    Nature Reviews Materials 6, 1071

  • News & Views |

    The therapeutic applications of DNAzymes are limited because of their low effectiveness in vivo. Now, a promising approach for constructing DNAzymes that show high gene-silencing efficiency in mammalian cells has been developed. This approach incorporates chemical modifications into an existing DNAzyme scaffold.

    • Yifei Zhou
    •  & Chuanzheng Zhou
    Nature Chemistry 13, 299-301
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