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NICOLETTA LANESE, LIVE SCIENCE
12 JANUARY 2021
Two thin strands wound together in a spiraling helix: This is the iconic shape of a DNA molecule. But sometimes, DNA can form a rare quadruple-helix, and this odd structure may play a role in diseases like cancer.
Not much is known about these four-stranded DNA, known as G-quadruplexes but now, scientists have developed a new way to detect these odd molecules and observe how they behave in living cells.
In a new study, published January 8 in the journal
Nature Communications, the team described how certain proteins cause the G-quadruplex to unravel; in the future, their work could lead to new drugs that grab hold of quadruple-helix DNA and disrupt its activity.