It’s common to use circular dichroism (CD) to probe supramolecular structure of polynucleotides, but its interpretation is currently limited by availability of empirical structure-property relationships. To address this gap, we have developed an exciton Hamiltonian model to reliably compute CD spectra of polynucleotides. We believe our approach will expand the scope of CD in future studies involving polynucleotides.

Effect of Structural Dynamics and Base Pair Sequence on the Nature of Excited States in DNA Hairpins