Reactions templated by nucleic acids: more ways to translate oligonucleotide-based instructions into emerging function

The programmability of oligonucleotide recognition offers an attractive platform to direct the assembly of reactive partners that can engage in chemical reactions. Recently, significant progress has been made in both the breadth of chemical transformations and in the functional output of the reaction. Herein we summarize these recent progresses and illustrate their applications to translate oligonucleotide instructions into functional materials and novel architectures (conductive polymers, nanopatterns, novel oligonucleotide junctions); into fluorescent or bioactive molecule using cellular RNA; to interrogate secondary structures or oligonucelic acids; or a synthetic oligomer.

SNP genotyping by DNA photoligation: application to SNP detection of genes from food crops

We describe a simple and inexpensive single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) typing method, using DNA photoligation with 5-carboxyvinyl-2'-deoxyuridine and two fluorophores. This SNP-typing method facilitates qualitative determination of genes from indica and japonica rice, and showed a high degree of single nucleotide specificity up to 10 000. This method can be used in the SNP typing of actual genomic DNA samples from food crops.