Alteration of the DNA double helix conformation upon incorporation of mispairs as revealed by energy computations and pathways of point mutations.

To explain biochemical and genetic data on spontaneous nucleotide replacements in nucleic acid biosynthesis all the 8 mispairs in normal tautomeric forms have been considered. Possible B-conformations of DNA fragments containing each of such mispairs incorporated between Watson-Crick pairs have been found using computations of the energy of non-bonded interactions via classical potential functions. These conformations have no reduced interatomic contacts. The values of each dihedral angle of the sugar-phosphate backbone fall within the limits of those of double-helical fragments of B-DNA in crystals. These values differ from those of the corresponding angles for the low-energy polynucleotide conformations consisting of canonical pairs by no more than 30 degrees (except for the fragment with the U:U pair for which the C4'-C3'-O-P angle differs by about 50 degrees). The difference in experimentally observed frequencies of various nucleotide replacements in DNA biosynthesis correlates with the difference in the energy of non-bonded interactions and with the extent of the sugar-phosphate backbone distortion for the fragments containing the mispairs which serve as intermediates for the replacements.