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Genetic Code Expansion Facilitates Position‐Selective Labeling of RNA for Biophysical Studies
Author(s) -
Hegelein Andreas,
Müller Diana,
Größl Sylvester,
Göbel Michael,
Hengesbach Martin,
Schwalbe Harald
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
chemistry – a european journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.687
H-Index - 242
eISSN - 1521-3765
pISSN - 0947-6539
DOI - 10.1002/chem.201904623
Subject(s) - phosphoramidite , rna , nucleic acid , dna , transcription (linguistics) , genetic code , computational biology , base pair , chemistry , combinatorial chemistry , biology , computer science , biochemistry , oligonucleotide , gene , linguistics , philosophy
Abstract Nature relies on reading and synthesizing the genetic code with high fidelity. Nucleic acid building blocks that are orthogonal to the canonical A‐T and G‐C base‐pairs are therefore uniquely suitable to facilitate position‐specific labeling of nucleic acids. Here, we employ the orthogonal kappa‐xanthosine‐base‐pair for in vitro transcription of labeled RNA. We devised an improved synthetic route to obtain the phosphoramidite of the deoxy‐version of the kappa nucleoside in solid phase synthesis. From this DNA template, we demonstrate the reliable incorporation of xanthosine during in vitro transcription. Using NMR spectroscopy, we show that xanthosine introduces only minor structural changes in an RNA helix. We furthermore synthesized a clickable 7‐deaza‐xanthosine, which allows to site‐specifically modify transcribed RNA molecules with fluorophores or other labels.