Site-specific alkylation of RNA by reactive oligodeoxynucleotides provides structural information and represents the first step towards the design of RNA derivatives to be used for functional studies. Specific alkylation of 4.5S RNA at G53, the first base of the apical tetraloop, was achieved by incubation with oligodeoxynucleotide ON2, complementary to nucleotides 38Ϫ53, which carries a p- benzylamidophosphate group at the 5′ end. Alkylation efficiency was increased by a factor of 6, without alteration of specificity, in the presence of a helper oligodeoxynucleotide, ON1, complementary to nucleotides 58Ϫ71 of the opposite strand of the RNA helix. A second reactive oligodeoxynucleotide, ON1-3′-R, was obtained by attaching the alkylating group to the 3′ end of ON1. ON1-3′-R was able to modify G58. In the presence of ON2 as a helper oligodeoxynucleotide, the specificity of ON1-3′-R changes and efficient alkylation of nucleotides G54, A56 and G57 of the apical region of 4.5S RNA was observed.Keywords : Escherichia coli 4.5S RNA; RNA secondary structure ; site-specific modification ; reactive oligodeoxynucleotide.Interactions of RNA with other macromolecules are studied, complementary to the apical stem-loop structure of 4.5S RNA of Escherichia coli were shown to stimulate synergistically the among others, by cross-linking approaches. The most informative approaches are reactions of RNA molecules carrying indivi-formation of a ternary complex up to 10-fold (Malygin et al., 1996). Here, we use chemically reactive oligodeoxynucleotide dual activated bases. Derivatives of small RNAs can be synthesized chemically whereas methods to modify large RNA mole-derivatives bearing a p-(N-2-chloroethyl-N-methylamino)benzylamidophosphate group at either the 5′ or 3′ ends. After hybridcules at specific sites are still a challenging task. A very promising approach involves chemically reactive derivatives of anti-ization with 4.5S RNA, site-specific alkylation is observed.Upon combination with a second unmodified oligodeoxynucleosense oligonucleotides, among which phosphamide derivatives with a terminal alkylation group have proven to be most useful tide complementary to the opposite RNA strand, alkylation efficiencies are improved. In addition, a different hybrid structure (Zenkova et al., 1990(Zenkova et al., , 1995Venkstern et al., 1990). They are able to modify any nucleotide residue in RNA (except uridine) was observed in the presence of an oligodeoxynucleotide complementary to bases 38Ϫ53 of 4.5S RNA (ON2) as a helper neighboring the oligonucleotide 5′ or 3′ ends (Knorre et al., 1986). By this method, aminobenzyl groups are introduced, oligodeoxynucleotide which resulted in alkylation of another set of nucleotides within the apical domain of 4.5S RNA. which in turn can be converted into site-specific, photoreactive derivatives of RNAs. Modification efficiencies largely depend on the extent of hybridization between the target nucleic acid and the complementary oligodeoxynucleotide that often is inhib-MATERIALS AND METHODS ited...