Systematic exploration of a class of hydrophobic unnatural base pairs yields multiple new candidates for the expansion of the genetic alphabet.

ABSTRACT: We have developed a family of unnatural base pairs (UBPs), which rely on hydrophobic and packing interactions for pairing and which are well replicated and transcribed. While the pair formed between d5SICS and dNaM (d5SICS-dNaM) has received the most attention, and has been used to expand the genetic alphabet of a living organism, recent efforts have identified dTPT3-dNaM, which is replicated with even higher fidelity. These efforts also resulted in more UBPs than could be independently analyzed, and thus we now report a PCR-based screen to identify the most promising. While we found that dTPT3-dNaM is generally the most promising UBP, we identified several others that are replicated nearly as well and significantly better than d5SICS-dNaM, and are thus viable candidates for the expansion

SUBMITTER: Dhami K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4176363 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature