Effect of metal shielding on the enzymatic construction of artificial base pairs.

Effect of metal shielding on the enzymatic construction of artificial base pairs. Chembiochem. 2020 Jul 16;: Authors: Flamme M, Levi-Acobas F, Hensel S, Naskar S, Röthlisberger P, Sarac I, Gasser G, Müller J, Hollenstein M Abstract Formation of metal base pairs is a versatile method for the introduction of metal cations into nucleic acids that has been applied in numerous applications including the construction of metal nanowires, development of energy, charge transfer devices and expansion of the genetic alphabet. As an alternative, enzymatic construction of metal base pairs represents an alluring strategy that grants access to longer sequences and offers the possibility of using such unnatural base pairs (UBPs) in SELEX experiments for the identification of functional nucleic acids. This method remains rather underexplored and a better understanding of the key parameters in the design of efficient nucleotides is required. Herein, we have investigated the effect of methylation of the imidazole nucleoside (dImnMe  TP) on the efficiency of the enzymatic construction of metal base pairs. The presence of methyl substituents on dImTP facilitates the polymerase-driven formation of dIm4Me -Ag I -dIm and dIm2Me TP- Cr III - dIm base pairs. Steric factors rather than basicity of the imidazole nucleobase appear to govern the enzymatic formation of such metal base pairs. We also demonstrate the compatibility of other metal cations rarely ...
Source: Chembiochem - Category: Biochemistry Authors: Tags: Chembiochem Source Type: research