A Surprising New Kind of Proton Transfer

Hydrogen bonds are ubiquitous but nowhere more important than in the structure of DNA and RNA, where they join the “stair-step” base pairs across the double strand. It has long been thought that protons transfer in molecules only by means of such hydrogen bonds.

Common wisdom has it that protons only travel between molecules via hydrogen bonds: No hydrogen bonds, no proton transfer. Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Advanced Light Source and their colleagues at the University of Southern California, investigating molecular components of RNA, were surprised to find that protons can find ways to transfer even when hydrogen bonds are blocked.

Read about it here:

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2012/03/18/proton-transfer/