Erik Bjerreg. Pedersen

High physiological thermal triplex stability optimization of twisted intercalating nucleic acids (TINA)

The structure of the monomer (R)-1-O-[4-(1-pyrenylethynyl)phenylmethyl]glycerol () in twisted intercalating nucleic acids (TINA) was optimized for stabilizing interactions between the intercalator and surrounding nucleobases when used as a triplex forming oligonucleotide (TFO). Enhancement of pi-pi interactions with nucleobases of the TFO was achieved by increasing the aromatic surface using the (R)-1-O-[4-(1-pyrenylethynyl)naphthylmethyl]glycerol monomer (). Bulge insertion of in the middle of a Hoogsteen-type triplex increased the triplex thermal stability, DeltaT(m) = +2.0 degrees C compared with at pH 7.2. Syntheses and thermal denaturation studies of triplexes and duplexes are described for three novel TINA monomers. The influence of pi-pi interactions, link length and the positioning of the ether in the linker in the TINA derivatives are described.

Using an aryl phenanthroimidazole moiety as a conjugated flexible intercalator to improve the hybridization efficiency of a triplex-forming oligonucleotide.

When inserting 2-phenyl or 2-naphth-1-yl-phenanthroimidazole intercalators (X and Y, respectively) as bulges into triplex-forming oligonucleotides, both intercalators show extraordinary high thermal stability of the corresponding Hoogsteen-type triplexes and Hoogsteen-type parallel duplexes with high discrimination to Hoogsteen mismatches. Molecular modeling shows that the phenyl or the naphthyl ring stacks with the nucleobases in the TFO, while the phenanthroimidazol moiety stacks with the base pairs of the dsDNA. DNA-strands containing the intercalator X show higher thermal triplex stability than DNA-strands containing the intercalator Y. The difference can be explained by a lower degree of planarity of the intercalator in the case of naphthyl. It was also observed that triplex stability was considerably reduced when the intercalators X or Y was replaced by 2-(naphthlen-1-yl)imidazole. This confirms intercalation as the important factor for triplex stabilization and it rules out an alternative complexation of protonated imidazole with two phosphate groups. The intercalating nucleic acid monomers X and Y were obtained via a condensation reaction of 9,10-phenanthrenequinone (4) with (S)-4-(2-(2,2-dimethyl-1,3-dioxolan-4-yl)ethoxy)benzaldehyde (3a) or (S)-4-(2-(2,2-dimethyl-1,3-dioxolan-4-yl)ethoxy)-1-naphthaldehyde (3b), respectively, in the presence of acetic acid and ammonium acetate. The required monomers for DNA synthesis using amidite chemistry were obtained by standard deprotection of the hydroxy groups followed by 4,4-dimethoxytritylation and phosphitylation.