ARITRACTIn 4M NaCl solutions (dC-dG) NMR spectroscopy gives evidence for sequence-dependent conformations or right handed deoxynucleotides (1-9). Assignments have recently been made for phosphodiester groups in the sugar-phosphate backbones ot snort oligonucleotides using 31P-lH decoupling experiments (10-12), two dimensional NMR 31P-lH correlation spectroscopy (13), and from 170 labeled experiments (14). Also, 31P NMR spectra of the left handed Z DNA of polynucleotides show two characteristic signals with separation or ca. 0.5-1.5 ppm, which can be used to detect the presence of Z DNA in solution (3,6,8,9,(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23). It is usual to assume that the downfield and upfield components correspond to predominantly gt and gg conformations, respectively, of the i and a torsion angles (24) in the 03'-P-05' linkages (6,(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)