Surface reactive polymers for special applications in nucleic acid synthesis

Solid-phase supports for oligonucleotide synthesis

This unit begins with a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of oligonucleotide synthesis using solid supports. The physical and chemical properties of solid-phase supports are discussed in terms of their suitability for oligonucleotide synthesis. In addition, the unit outlines the properties of linkers used for transient or permanent attachment of properly protected nucleosides to the derivatized support, as well as strategies for coupling nucleosides to linkers and conditions for the release of synthetic oligonucleotides from specific supports.

Introduction: array technology - an overview

Microarray technology has its roots in high-throughput parallel synthesis of biomacromolecules, combined with combinatorial science. In principle, the preparation of arrays can be performed either by in situ synthesis of biomacromolecules on solid substrates or by spotting of ex situ synthesized biomacromolecules onto the substrate surface. The application of microarrays includes spatial addressing with target (macro) molecules and screening for interactions between immobilized probe and target. The screening is simplified by the microarray format, which features a known structure of every immobilized library element. The area of nucleic acid arrays is best developed, because such arrays are allowed to follow the biosynthetic pathway from genes to proteins, and because nucleic acid hybridization is a most straightforward screening tool. Applications to genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and glycomics are currently in the foreground of interest; in this postgenomic phase they are allowed to gain new insights into the molecular basis of cellular processes and the development of disease.

Solid-supported oligonucleotide systems for special biomedical applications

The use of composite beads consisting of a 6 microns polystyrene core with 30 nm surface-bound silica particles to routine automatic oligodeoxynucleotide (ODN) synthesis is described.

Fractals for multicyclic synthesis conditions of biopolymers. Examples of oligonucleotide synthesis measured by high-performance capillary electrophoresis and ion-exchange high-performance liquid chromatography

We have developed models of patterns for nucleotide chain growth. These patterns are measurable by high-performance capillary electrophoresis and ion-exchange high-performance liquid chromatography in crude products of solid-phase synthesized 30mer and 65mer oligodeoxyribonucleotide target sequences N. We introduce mathematical methods for finding characteristic values d(o) and p(o) for constant chemical modes of growth as well as d and p for non-constant chemical modes of growth (d = probability of propagation, p = probability of termination). These methods are employed by presenting the accompanying computer software developed by us in C code, Mathematica R languages, and Fortran. Characteristic values of the parameters d, p, and the target nucleotide length N describe the complete composition of the crude product. From this we have developed the relation 2 - [N/(N - 1)]/Da, measurable(N,d) as a universal quantitative measure for multicyclic synthesis conditions (D, fractal dimension and similarity exponent, respectively). We use this mathematical treatment to compare the efficiency of oligodeoxyribonucleotide syntheses of different target length N on polymer support materials. Further, we analyze selected syntheses of short and long oligodeoxyribonucleotides as well as single-stranded DNA sequences by well-known empirical autocorrelation, fast Fourier transformation, and embedding dimension techniques.