Statistical analysis of nuclear magnetic resonance relaxation parameters of rare deoxyribonucleic acid intermediates

Rare DNA intermediate structures are essential for biological processes in living organisms, including protein folding and unfolding, gene transcription, and replication. Studies have been conducted on DNA intermediate structures using different nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) approaches, but NMR-based statistical analysis of DNA is less researched. Therefore, the current study presents a statistical analysis of NMR longitudinal (T1) and transverse (T2) relaxation times for rare DNA intermediate structures. Published experimental T1 and T2 datasets for five rare DNA intermediate structures were simulated using an R script to obtain 500 data points for each DNA structure; these were used to perform non-parametric statistical analysis using Wolfram Mathematica software. Results of the analysis show that the T1 and T2 datasets for each of the five rare DNA structures have distinct features. This highlights the possibility of utilising DNA T1 and T2 NMR parameters to isolate DNA structures responsible for regulating gene transcription, replication, and repair.