Alkylated nucleotides

A very different but equally direct mechanism is used to repair 1-methyladenine and 3-methylcytosine. The amino groups of A and C residues are sometimes methylated when the DNA is single-stranded, and the methylation directly affects proper base pairing. In E. coli, oxidative demethylation of these alkylated nucleotides is mediated by the AllcB protein, a member of the a-ketoglutarate-Fe2+-dependent dioxygenase superfamily (Fig. 25-27). (See Box 4-3 for a description of another member of this enzyme family.)... 

Repair of DNA damage including reversal of damage (e.g. enzymatic photoreactivation, alkylated nucleotide repair and ligation of strand breaks) and excision repair and... 

Phenyls and polyhalogenated phenyls are metabolized to their hydroxy derivatives, each presumably through a benzene oxide intermediate (e.g., references 134, 152, 180, 189, and 272) (Figure 9). Aromatic hydroxylation also occurs in the metabolism of Oxazepam 457) as evidenced by the production of hydroxyphenyl metabolites in the urine of the rat and (to a lesser extent) pig and man. ° Lutz and Schlatterhave demonstrated covalent binding in vivo of a benzene metabolite with the DNA of livers of rats exposed to isotopi-cally labeled benzene in an inhalation chamber. In terms of alkylated nucleotides per mole of DNA phosphate, the potency of benzene calculates to... 

Acylation reactions can be done at the nucleophilic sites on pyrimidines using activated forms of carboxylic acids. Acylation of functional groups in nucleotides typically is used for protection during synthesis (Reese, 1973). However, for bioconjugate applications, the reactivity of native groups on pyrimidines is not as great as that obtained using an amine-terminal spacer derivative, such as those described in Chapter 27, Section 2.1. Yields and reaction rates are typically low for direct acylation or alkylation of pyrimidine bases, especially in aqueous environments. 

Methods currently available for chemiluminescent detection of nucleic acids are not based on derivatization techniques that directly recognize one of the nucleic acid bases or nucleotides. For chemical derivatization-based chemiluminescent detection, the specific reactivity of alkyl glyoxals and arylglyoxals with adenine or guanine nucleotides has been investigated. 

Irradiation of dianisyl alkyl phosphates gives alkyl phosphates and 4,4 -dimethoxy-biphenyl in yields exceeding 90%.6 As stated by the authors, this type of reaction appears to have promise for the synthesis of nucleotides. 

Potentially tautomeric pyrimidines and purines are /V-alkylated under two-phase conditions, using tetra-n-butylammonium bromide or Aliquat as the catalyst [75-77], Alkylation of, for example, uracil, thiamine, and cytosine yield the 1-mono-and 1,3-dialkylated derivatives [77-81]. Theobromine and other xanthines are alkylated at N1 and/or at N3, but adenine is preferentially alkylated at N9 (70-80%), with smaller amounts of the N3-alkylated derivative (20-25%), under the basic two-phase conditions [76]. These observations should be compared with the preferential alkylation at N3 under neutral conditions. The procedure is of importance in the derivatization of nucleic acids and it has been developed for the /V-alkylation of nucleosides and nucleotides using haloalkanes or trialkyl phosphates in the presence of tetra-n-butylammonium fluoride [80], Under analogous conditions, pyrimidine nucleosides are O-acylated [79]. The catalysed alkylation reactions have been extended to the glycosidation of pyrrolo[2,3-r/]pyrimidines, pyrrolo[3,2-c]pyridines, and pyrazolo[3,4-r/]pyrimidines (e.g. Scheme 5.20) [e.g. 82-88] as a route to potentially biologically active azapurine analogues. 

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