© 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]
New strategies for the synthesis of unmodified and modified oligonucleotides
Department of Life Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 4259 Nagatsuta, Midoriku, Yokohama, 226-8501, Japan
*Corresponding author. E-mail: msekine{at}bio.titech.ac.jp
Abstract
In this paper, our recent studies on the synthesis of unmodified and modified oligonucleotides are comprehensively reviewed. We have developed a new synthetic strategy using TrS, a new 5'-protecting group, that enabled us to reduce one of the steps previously required for DNA synthesis. The "activated phosphite method" without base protection could provide a new tool for the synthesis of DNA oligomers involving baselabile functional groups such as N-acylated nucleobases capable of Watson-Crick base pairing. This new method was successfully applied to the synthesis of oligodeoxynucleotides incorporating cytosine N-oxide or adenine N-oxide that could not be synthesized by the current methods. Furthermore, several approaches we recently developed for the synthesis of several kinds of 2'-O-modified RNA oligomers will be reported.