Base-Filling in Double-Helical Nucleic Acids

Base-filling, i. e., post-synthetic furnishing of an oligonucleotide scaffold with base moieties or their analogues, is an interesting alternative to the conventional approach of sequential coupling of building blocks (modified or otherwise). Reversible attachment of the base moieties is particularly attractive as it allows the use of dynamic combinatorial chemistry and usually leads to higher fidelity. This concept article summarizes the various backbones and coupling reactions used for base-filling over the past fifteen years, discusses the impact of base stacking and pairing on efficiency and fidelity and highlights potential and realized applications. The efforts to develop backbone and nucleobase derivatives for robust base-filling of nucleic acids, as well as the realized and potential applications of such reactions, are summarized. Covalent and non-covalent interactions contributing to the efficiency and fidelity of base-filling are discussed. image