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July 18, 2005

Model of Esperamicin A1

Esperamicin A1 -- an enediyne -- binds to DNA immediately prior to activation of its "warhead" (shown in orange), which will cleave the DNA. Enediynes are naturally-occurring molecules commonly called biological warheads for their ability to bind to and split tumors' DNA backbones. [Computations were performed on the National Center for Supercomputing Applications SGI Origin2000 supercomputer, purchased primarily with funds from the U.S. National Science Foundation. (Year of image: 2001)

Credit: Images by Steven Feldgus; simulation completed using computational resources provided by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)


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