Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access published online on May 5, 2009
Nucleic Acids Research, doi:10.1093/nar/gkp287
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Web Server Issue |
3D-DART: a DNA structure modelling server
Bijvoet Center for Biomolecular Research, Science Faculty, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
*To whom correspondence may be addressed. Tel: +31 30 2533859; Fax: +31 30 2537623; Email: a.m.j.j.bonvin{at}uu.nl
Received January 30, 2009. Revised April 14, 2009. Accepted April 14, 2009.
There is a growing interest in structural studies of DNA by both experimental and computational approaches. Often, 3D-structural models of DNA are required, for instance, to serve as templates for homology modeling, as starting structures for macro-molecular docking or as scaffold for NMR structure calculations. The conformational adaptability of DNA when binding to a protein is often an important factor and at the same time a limitation in such studies. As a response to the demand for 3D-structural models reflecting the intrinsic plasticity of DNA we present the 3D-DART server (3DNA-Driven DNA Analysis and Rebuilding Tool). The server provides an easy interface to a powerful collection of tools for the generation of DNA-structural models in custom conformations. The computational engine beyond the server makes use of the 3DNA software suite together with a collection of home-written python scripts. The server is freely available at http://haddock.chem.uu.nl/dna without any login requirement.