Beware of sweeping statements - I work with nucleic acids (mostly
bound to proteins) and I am continually irritated by the use of * in
nucleic acid names, and I think I qualify as anyone.
Now that the ASCII code has settled down somewhat, ' could take
it's rightful place in PDB files,
Anyone who works with nucleic acids will certainly prefer the current
situation. From the PDB format guidelines:
* The asterisk (*) is used in place of the prime character (')
for naming atoms of the sugar group. The prime was avoided historically
because of non-uniformity of its external
