The review summarizes structural features, biological activity and synthetic methods of disaccharide nucleosides. In the first part the structures of natural disaccharide nucleosides are presented. The consequent part deals with general methods of synthesis of these compounds -formation of new N-and O-glycosidic bonds. Recent achievements in the preparation of disaccharide nucleosides from natural nucleosides are discussed. The last part is devoted to the synthesis and properties of oligonucleotides containing disaccharide nucleosides.Disaccharide nucleosides belong to an important group of natural compounds forming poly(ADP-ribose) and found in tRNA, antibiotics, and other physiologically active compounds. To date about a hundred disaccharide nucleoside and related derivatives have been isolated from various natural sources. These compounds contain an extra carbohydrate residue linked to one of the nucleoside hydroxyl groups via an O-glycosidic bond. The presence of a disaccharide residue and a heterocyclic base makes their properties similar to those of carbohydrates and nucleosides. These compounds manifest a broad spectrum of biological (including antibacterial, fungicidal, herbicidal, antitumour and antiviral) activities. The review by Lerner [1] published in 1991 provides a detailed description of the structures of disaccharide nucleoside antibiotics and the approaches to their synthesis. Some of the published data on the synthesis of complex nucleoside antibiotics were summarized by Knapp [2]. Since that time, many new publications devoted to this problem have appeared in the current literature. In our recent publiccations physicochemical properties [3], structure and general synthetic approaches to the synthesis [4] of disaccharide nucleosides were reviewed. Here we describe structural peculiarities of disaccharide nucleosides and summarize our recent data on their synthesis and incorporation into oligonucleotides (ONs).
NATURAL DISACCHARIDE NUCLEOSIDESThe structures of disaccharide nucleosides are extremely diverse [5,6] and their elucidation is a rather complicated task. In addition to a heterocyclic base and two mono-saccharide residues, these compounds contain various functional substituents, such as acyl and alkyl groups as well as phosphate and sulfate residues, fatty acids, amino acids, peptides and additional sugars. Their degradation by acid and alkaline hydrolysis or methanolysis, periodate oxidation and subsequent reduction yields fragments the structures of which can be established by physicochemical methods. At present, the structures of many complex antibiotics are determined mainly by NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry.According to their structure natural disaccharide nucleosides may be divided into three main groups. Disaccharide nucleosides belonging to the first two groups contain natural purine nucleoside. In the first group additional ribofuranosyl residue is attached via O-glycosidic bond to the adenosine or guanosine. Most of these derivatives were found in biopolymers. 2 (3 )-O-...