Hiroshi Abe

We hypothesized that, because the stereoselectivity of anomeric radical reactions was significantly influenced by the anomeric effect, which can be controlled by restricting the conformation of the radical intermediate, the proper conformational restriction of the pyranose ring of the substrates would therefore make highly alpha- and beta-stereoselective anomeric radical reactions possible. Thus, the conformationally restricted 1-phenylseleno-D-xylose derivatives 9 and 10, restricted in a (4)C(1

We describe the use of modified fluorescent-labeled oligonucleotide probes in the sequence-specific detection of messenger RNAs in live human cells. To make this detection possible, we developed a previously undescribed probe design that combines earlier quenched autoligation chemistry with a previously undescribed fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) strategy to lower background signals. The probe pairs consisted of a nucleophilic 3'-phosphorothioate probe carrying a Cy5 FRET acceptor,

We have developed a reduction-triggered fluorescence probe with a new fluorogenic compound derivatized from Rhodamine for sensing oligonucleotides. The chemistry to activate the compound involves the reaction between the azide group of rhodamine derivatives and the reducing reagents, with the fluorescence signal appearing after reduction of the azide group. The signal/background ratio of this fluorogenic compound reached 2100-fold enhancement in fluorescence intensity. Dithio-1,4-threitol or tri

Getting the runaround: Small circular RNA molecules containing an infinite open reading frame were synthesized and tested in an E. coli cell-free translation system. A circular RNA 126 nucleotides in length was found to produce more product than its linear counterpart by two orders of magnitude, because a ribosome can work more effectively towards the elongation on circular RNA than it can on linear RNA in this continuous peptide synthesis. As a service to our authors and readers, this journal p

Recent studies have established the utility of oligonucleotide ligation methods in the detection of DNAs and RNAs in solution and in cellular imaging. Notably, the ligated full-length oligonucleotide products commonly bind to the target nucleic acid much more tightly than do the two starting half-probes, which effectively limits the resulting signals to one per target. Here, we report on a molecular strategy for destabilizing ligated products in template-promoted self-ligation reactions, thus yi