Glen Research provides several unique, base-modified 2’-deoxynucleoside monomers for site specific modification of oligonucleotides. These synthons are known as Convertible Nucleosides, and the process for use in oligo modification is referred to as “Post-Synthetic Substitution”.1 Since their introduction they have proven useful in physical chemical studies and in studies of DNA replication, error and mutation potential.
This note provides an introductory overview of these interesting molecules, and a brief update of the key chemistry milestones since their introduction. And this note reviews an interesting recent research application using convertible dG that takes advantage of the site-specific preparation of a DNA lesion to investigate translesion synthesis (TLS) properties of mammalian cell polymerases and the accuracy of Y-family DNA polymerases ĸ (kappa) and ι (iota).