Self-Replication of Oligonucleotides in Reverse Micelles

✍ Scribed by Christof Böhler; Pier Luigi Luisi; Willi Bannwarth

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1993
• Tongue: German
• Weight: 468 KB
• Volume: 76
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0018-019X
• DOI: 10.1002/hlca.19930760616

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The coupling between the tri(deoxynucleotides) d[(MeO)C‐G‐Ap] (1) and d[(NH~2~)T~d5~′‐C‐G‐] (2) to yield the phosphoramidate‐linked (hexadeoxy‐nucleotide) d[(MeO)C‐G‐Anh^5^′T~d5~′‐C‐G] (3) was investigated both in aqueous solution and in reverse micelles constituted of CTAB (cetyl(trimethyl)ammonium bromide) in hexane/pentan‐1‐ol 9:1. No siginificant difference was found concerning the yield and the kinetics of the reaction in the two systems. The coupling between 1 and 2 was also carried out in the presence of the template d[(MeO)C‐G‐A‐T‐C‐G] (4), an analogue of 3, so as to reproduce the conditions of template‐directed self replication. It was shown that the trinucleotide coupling in the presence of a template obeys the so‐called square‐root law both in H~2~O and in reverse micelles. No significant difference of the time course of the reaction in H~2~O and in reverse micelles was observed. This shows that self‐replication of oligonucleotides occurs within geometrically bounded structures, which represents a step forward in the mimicking of minimal life processes.