2-Thiouracil deprived of thiocarbonyl function preferentially base pairs with guanine rather than adenine in RNA and DNA duplexes.

ABSTRACT: 2-Thiouracil-containing nucleosides are essential modified units of natural and synthetic nucleic acids. In particular, the 5-substituted-2-thiouridines (S2Us) present in tRNA play an important role in tuning the translation process through codon-anticodon interactions. The enhanced thermodynamic stability of S2U-containing RNA duplexes and the preferred S2U-A versus S2U-G base pairing are appreciated characteristics of S2U-modified molecular probes. Recently, we have demonstrated that 2-thiouridine (alone or within an RNA chain) is predominantly transformed under oxidative stress conditions to 4-pyrimidinone riboside (H2U) and not to uridine. Due to the important biological functions and various biotechnological applications for sulfur-containing nucleic acids, we compared the thermodynam

SUBMITTER: Sochacka E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4357714 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature