Thermodynamic treatment of oligonucleotide duplex–simplex equilibria

Thermodynamic formulations have been devised to obtain Delta G degrees values directly from spectroscopic data at a fixed common temperature in nucleic acid duplex-simplex melting curves. In addition, the dependence of melting on salt concentration has been expressed in terms of a stepwise stoichiometric representation, which leads to a specific equation for the partition of the added sodium ions between the different oligonucleotide forms.