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Cover Picture: Hydrogen‐Bond Strength of CC and GG Pairs Determined by Steric Repulsion: Electrostatics and Charge Transfer Overruled (Chem. Eur. J. 43/2017)
Author(s) -
van der Lubbe Stephanie C. C.,
Fonseca Guerra Célia
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
chemistry – a european journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Reports
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.687
H-Index - 242
eISSN - 1521-3765
pISSN - 0947-6539
DOI - 10.1002/chem.201702436
Subject(s) - steric effects , hydrogen bond , chemistry , guanine , pauli exclusion principle , cytosine , electrostatics , crystallography , chemical physics , computational chemistry , dna , stereochemistry , molecule , nucleotide , quantum mechanics , physics , biochemistry , organic chemistry , gene
A new viewpoint on hydrogen bonds is presented, with the Pauli (steric) repulsion playing a decisive role. Hydrogen bonds are traditionally described as electrostatic interactions, which also exhibit stabilization by charge transfer, polarization, and dispersion interactions. Quantum chemical computations on the mismatched DNA base pairs cytosine–cytosine (CC) and guanine–guanine (GG) show that the enhanced stabilization and shorter distance of GG is determined entirely by the difference in the Pauli repulsion. More information can be found in the Communication by C. Fonseca Guerra and S. C. C. van der Lubbe on page 10249.