The left-handed double helical nucleic acids.

Abstract

The conversion of right-handed dsDNA and dsRNA to the left-handed Z-conformation involves a reorganization of the nucleotides relative to each other. This conversion can be facilitated by the tight binding of a Z-conformation-specific protein domain from the editing enzyme dsRNA adenosine deaminase. This may influence the modification of both pre-mRNAs as well as some replicating RNA viruses.