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Medical Definition of Major groove
1. In a detailed analysis of DNA structure, there are two types of grooves that can be seen; the major groove has the nitrogen and oxygen atoms of the base pairs pointing inward toward the helical axis, while in the minor groove, the nitrogen and oxygen atoms point outwards; important because the major groove is more dependent on base composition and may be the site for protein recognition of specific DNA sequences or regions. (05 Mar 2000)