Oligonucleotides methods

Oligonucleotide Synthesis (phosphoramidite method - Lessinger) Review Tetrahedron 1992, 48,2223... 

The resulting oligonucleotide is often of surprising purity as judged by analytic HPLC or electrophoresis, and up to 30 mg of a deoxyeicosanucleotide (20-base DNA) can be routinely obtained. Nevertheless small amounts of short sequences, resulting from capping and from base-catalysed hydrolysis, must always be removed by quick gel filtration, repeated ethanol precipitation from water (desalting), reverse-phase HPLC, gel electrophoresis, and other standard methods. 

Another technique often used to examine the stmcture of double-heUcal oligonucleotides is two-dimensional nmr spectroscopy (see AfAGNETiC SPIN resonance). This method rehes on measurement of the nuclear Overhauser effects (NOEs) through space to determine the distances between protons (6). The stmcture of an oligonucleotide may be determined theoretically from a set of iaterproton distances. As a result of the complexities of the experiment and data analysis, the quality of the stmctural information obtained is debated. However, nmr spectroscopy does provide information pertaining to the stmcture of DNA ia solution and can serve as a complement to the stmctural information provided by crystallographic analysis. 

Phosphorothioates. All three synthetic approaches appHcable to unmodified oligonucleotides can be adapted for synthesis of phosphorothioates (11) (33,46). If all of the phosphodiester linkages in an oligonucleotide are to be replaced with phosphorothioates, the ff-phosphonate method for coupling, followed by oxidation with Sg in carbon disulfide and triethylamine in the final step, is the most straightforward method. 

In Section II we provide an overview of the current status of nucleic acid simulations, including studies on small oligonucleotides, DNA, RNA, and their complexes with proteins. This is followed a presentation of computational methods that are currently being applied for the study of nucleic acids. The final section of the chapter includes a number of practical considerations that may be useful in preparing, performing, and analyzing MD simulation based studies of nucleic acids. 

Natural selection works through the complementary processes of mutation and genetic reassortment by recombination. The oligonucleotide-directed mutagenesis methods used in the foregoing examples do not allow for recombination instead, mutations are combined manually to optimize a protein sequence. Willem Stemmer at Maxygen invented a method of directed evolution that uses both mutation and recombination. This method, called... 

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