The use of chemical reagents in the detection of DNA mutations

The duplex DNA is very underwound in the three‐stranded RecA protein‐mediated synaptic complex

“…Potassium permanganate is generally considered a probe for ssDNA; the mechanism of its selectivity, however, is different from other ssDNAspecific reagents. Some react with positions involved in hydrogen bond formation [halogenoacetaldehydes (Kohwi & Kohwi 1992), glyoxal (Lyubchenko et al 1982), carbodiimides (Smooker & Cotton 1993), dimethyl sulphate (Kirkegaard et al 1983), hydroxylamine and methoxylamine ( Johnston 1992)], while others are not capable of approaching reactive sites in the major groove of the double helix because of steric hindrance [diethyl pyrocarbonate (Kohwi & Kohwi 1992), bulky alkylating reagents (Mazin et al 1989)]. Potassium permanganate, as well as osmium tetroxide ( Jelen et al 1991) and sodium bisulphite (Chen & Shaw 1993), however, have a specific stereochemistry for pyrimidine bases.…”

Reactivity of potassium permanganate and tetraethylammonium chloride with mismatched bases and a simple mutation detection protocol

“…However, a T/G mismatch of high reactivity (-54A) contains the CT matched base pair sequence on both sides of the T/G mismatch. A T/G bond is stable and reactivity may be influenced by their surrounding sequence (8).…”

Evaluation of multiplex capillary heteroduplex analysis: A rapid and sensitive mutation screening technique

“…Scanning techniques include denaturing high performance liquid chromatography (DHPLC) [Liu et al, 1998], denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) [Fodde and Losekoot, 1994], chemical cleavage of mismatches (CCM) [Smooker and Cotton, 1993], protein truncation test (PTT) [van der Luijt et al, 1994], single-stranded conformational polymorphism (SSCP) [Orita et al, 1989], and heteroduplex analysis (HA) [Ganguly et al, 1993]. Each technique has its own advantages and disadvantages.…”