Thanks for pointing out the PDB id (
2kd4) of the structure you are interested in, and attaching the corresponding 3DNA output files. As always, such information is useful by making our discussions concrete.
Browsing through the output file (2kd4.out) and looking at the structure with Jmol, it appears to me 3DNA has no problem to analyze this structure.
First, the twist angles associate with intercalated steps are smaller, while those for the flanking steps are larger, than normal A-DNA twist values.
Local base-pair step parameters
step Shift Slide Rise Tilt Roll Twist
1 GC/GC 1.21 0.19 3.77 5.32 -16.06 9.14
2 CC/GG 0.42 -1.82 4.09 -13.22 0.06 37.79
3 CG/CG -0.08 -1.17 6.68 -7.87 -11.95 20.28
4 GC/GC 0.07 -0.19 3.40 0.22 -0.57 49.80
5 CG/CG -0.14 -1.18 6.62 3.50 -6.88 21.72
6 GG/CC 0.16 -1.82 3.69 14.10 12.69 39.30
7 GC/GC -1.33 0.15 3.44 -6.43 -13.80 6.98
Second, the output for the sugar torsion angles are also as expected (see below for the output for strand I). Because of the 2'--5' backbone linkage, angles alpha [
O3'(i-1)-P-O5'-C5'], epsilon [
C4'-C3'-O3'-P(i+1)] and zeta [
C3'-O3'-P(i+1)-O5'(i+1)] are not defined in the conventional sense.
Strand I
base alpha beta gamma delta epsilon zeta chi
1 G --- --- -135.8 105.5 --- --- 18.3
2 C --- 145.3 62.2 86.8 --- --- -126.7
3 C --- 176.8 -35.2 134.4 --- --- -103.9
4 G --- 115.9 64.8 61.7 --- --- -137.3
5 C --- 163.8 48.4 113.5 --- --- -114.8
6 G --- 178.6 50.6 83.4 --- --- -120.9
7 G --- -149.2 33.4 139.0 --- --- -83.2
8 C --- 154.9 20.2 120.1 --- --- -132.2
Note the following output from
find_pair:
^^vv opposite bp direction: 1(8) 1(1)-2(2)
^^vv opposite bp direction: 1(8) 7(7)-8(8)
I have attached the stacking diagram of the first step, where one can see clearly the two base pairs have opposite orientation. The same is true for the last step. Such base flapping occurs around B-Z junctions, as in
2acj. I do not know how reliable this part of the structure is, or its relevance.
You may also want to analyze this structure (or related ones) using Curves+. I noticed that Horowitz
et al. used Curves to analyze
2kd4 in their JACS publication.
HTH,
Xiang-Jun