This book gives physical chemists a broader view of potential biological applications of their techniques for the study of nucleic acids in the gas phase. It provides organic chemists, biophysicists, and pharmacologists with an introduction to new techniques they can use to find the answers to yet unsolved questions. Laboratory sciences have bloomed with a variety of techniques to decipher the properties of the molecules of life. This volume introduces techniques used to investigate the properties of nucleic acids in the absence of solvent. It highlights the specificities pertaining to the studies of nucleic acids, although some of the techniques can similarly be applied to the study of other biomolecules, like proteins. The first part of the book introduces the techniques, from the transfer of nucleic acids to the gas-phase, to their detailed physico-chemical investigation. Each chapter is devoted to a specific molecular property, and illustrates how various approaches (experimental and theoretical) can be combined for the interpretation.
The second part of the book is devoted to applying the gas-phase approaches to solve specific questions related to the biophysics, biochemistry or pharmacology of nucleic acids.

Introduces the reader to gas phase nucleic acid investigations: from the transfer to the gas phase, over spectroscopy to fragmentation reactions Highly interdisciplinary work: relevant to biophysicists, physical and organic chemists, and even pharmacologists Describes current and prospective research and applications of nucleic acids in the gas phase Summarizes research results using a multitude of different physical chemical techniques: from spectroscopy, over mass spectrometry to coupled techniques

Inhalt
Introduction: Why study Nucleic Acids in vacuo?.- Transferring Nucleic Acids to the Gas Phase.- Structure of Nucleic Acids in the Gas Phase.- Interactions between Nucleic Acid Ions and Electrons and Photons.- Gas-phase Spectroscopy of Nucleic Acids.- Fragmentation Reactions of Nucleic Acid Ions in the Gas Phase.- Characterization of Ribonucleic Acids and their Modifications by Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance Mass Spectrometry.- Quantification of DNA Damage using Mass Spectrometry Techniques.- Ligand Binding to Nucleic Acids.- MS-based Approaches for Nucleic Acid Structural Determination.