© 2008 Oxford University Press
This article appears in the following Nucleic Acid Symposium Series issue: Joint Symposium of the 18th International Roundtable on Nucleosides, Nucleotides and Nucleic Acids and the 35th International Symposium on Nucleic Acids Chemistry [View the issue table of contents]
Characterization and Use of Tricyclic Fluorescent Nucleic Acid Base Analogues
1Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, SE-41296 Gothenburg, Sweden and 2School of Chemistry, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK
*Corresponding Author. E-mail: marcus.wilhelmsson{at}chalmers.se
Abstract
The two recently developed nucleic acid probe molecules tC and tCO both have unique properties compared to other molecules in the family of fluorescent base analogues.1–5 These tricyclic base analogues both form very stable base pairs with guanine and give minimal perturbations to the native structure of DNA.2 We have found that tCO is the brightest fluorescent base analogue reported4 and that tC also is very bright and has a fluorescence quantum yield that is virtually insensitive to its surrounding microenvironment within the nucleic acid3. These base analogues have so far been used in FRET-studies of a DNA-polymerase system6 and in initial anisotropy-studies of DNA-containing systems4.