[oasisbob]

Agreed, thanks.

I have vague memories of a college professor who had spent a lot of time working out the exact places water would tend to coordinate on the DNA strand as part of his early prior research. His rant on the role of hydrogen bonding in the molecule was memorable.

The authors state their contribution as, "specific longitudinal unstacking in a hydrophobic environment has to our best knowledge never been reported before."

[entee]

A little background on one of the authors: Carlos Bustamante (there are two science-famous ones, this one is NOT the one who analyzed Elizabeth Warren's DNA test) is a pioneer in structural analysis of DNA, particularly using optical tweezers to study how DNA (and later proteins) behave. As part of that work he has been interested in how tension or compression or other perturbations propagate through the DNA helix. The longitudinal unstacking is part of that.

Full disclosure: in graduate school I worked in a lab that published a paper that contradicted some of his previous work. It was a different part of the lab so I only know the high level overview of the controversy. He's a giant in the field though.