In order to understand the properties of nucleic acids and the mechanisms by which they are recognized by proteins, it is essential to understand the details of fine structure and couple the sequence and structure data. Our goal is to develop a database of nucleic acid structures and structural features so as to allow computer queries about structural characteristics, correlations of features among structures, and sequence-structure relationships. The achieve this goal, all of the available primary and calculated information about crystal structures of nucleic acids will be assembled into a relational database. The system that will be created will be portable and accessible to chemists and biologists in a large number of computer environments.
