When we compare the publicly accessible structures containing nucleic acids and proteins, we see that the NA-containing structures (i) represent about 8% of the archive, (ii) they have a lower quality, and (iii) that the situation is not improving with time. The quality problems of NA-containing structures can be divided into three groups: (i) inconsistently set and applied target values of the valence geometry, bond distances and bond angles, for nucleotides; (ii) poorly refined backbone geometries; (iii) incompletely and often incorrectly assigned base pairing topologies. In the talk, I will briefly discuss reasons I believe contribute to the lower overall quality of NA-containing versus protein structures and some possible ways to future improvements.
This research was funded by Czech Academy of Sciences, grant RVO 86652036.