Dynamics of Protons in DNA

An important property of the hydrogen atom was discovered in 1920 by two American chemists, Latimer and Rodebush (J Am Chem Soc 42(7):1419–1433, 1920). They found that many properties of substances can be easily explained by the assumption that the hydrogen atom, which is normally univalent, can sometimes assume ligancy two, and form a bridge between two atoms. This bridge is called the hydrogen bond. The most important hydrogen bonds are those in which a hydrogen atom joins pairs of fluorine, oxygen, or nitrogen atoms together.