High‐Molecular‐Weight Polynucleotides by Transferase‐Catalyzed Living Chain‐Growth Polycondensation

Abstract

We present terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-catalyzed enzymatic polymerization (TcEP) for the template-free synthesis of high-molecular-weight, single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) and demonstrate that it proceeds by a living chain-growth polycondensation mechanism. We show that the molecular weight of the reaction products is nearly monodisperse, and can be manipulated by the feed ratio of nucleotide (monomer) to oligonucleotide (initiator), as typically observed for living polymerization reactions. Understanding the synthesis mechanism and the reaction kinetics enables the rational, template-free synthesis of ssDNA that can be used for a range of biomedical and nanotechnology applications.

Enzymatic synthesis of biphenyl-DNA oligonucleotides

“…[71] Expectedly, decreasing the monomer/initiator ratio negatively impacted the TdT-mediated polymerization reactions. [72] The appendage of four Cnucleotides on ssDNA primers during TdT-mediated tailing reactions appears to be a general upper limit for such analogs since similar results had been reported with pyrene-modified nucleotides. [73,74]…”

Terminal Deoxynucleotidyl Transferase in the Synthesis and Modification of Nucleic Acids

“…Interestingly, the TdT is also capable of de novo synthesizing short DNA sequences (≤15 nt) . Regardless of the nature of the primer, the TdT can catalyze the polymerization of several dozens to several hundreds or even thousands of nucleotides, depending on the monomer/initiator ratio and the reaction time. In fact, the TdT‐catalyzed polymerization reactions yielding long ssDNA products bear a strong resemblance to living polymerization reactions …”

“…In fact, the TdT-catalyzed polymerization reactions yielding long ssDNA products bear as trong resemblancet ol iving polymerization reactions. [43] Most DNA polymerases have as trong preferencef or deoxynucleoside triphosphates (dNTPs) over ribonucleoside triphosphates (rNTPs) to avoid the misincorporation of ribonucleotides that are present in much higher physiological concentrations than their DNA counterparts. Another characteristicf eature of the TdT is the low discrimination for dNTPs over rNTPs (two-to ninefold), even though RNA synthesiss talls after the appendage of af ew nucleotides owing to ac onformational change in the extended primer( see below).…”

On the Enzymatic Formation of Metal Base Pairs with Thiolated and pKa‐Perturbed Nucleotides

“…primer) was increased (Figures S18 and S19). [35] Indeed, when the ration monomer vs. initiator was increased to 1000, over 50 S6G nucleotides could be appended at the 3'-end of primer P1 (Figures S18B and S19). Lastly, in order to exclude the possibility of formation of self-assembled higher-order structures especially in the presence of Co 2+ and S6G, [36] the TdT-tailing reactions were performed in the presence of three different cofactors (i.e.…”