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Science 29 January 1999:
Vol. 283. no. 5402, pp. 699 - 703
DOI: 10.1126/science.283.5402.699
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Reports

Chemical Etiology of Nucleic Acid Structure: Comparing Pentopyranosyl-(2'→4') Oligonucleotides with RNA

M. Beier, F. Reck, T. Wagner, R. Krishnamurthy, A. Eschenmoser *

All four members of the family of pentopyranosyl-(2'rightarrow 4') oligonucleotide systems that contain beta -ribo-, beta -xylo-, alpha -lyxo-, or alpha -arabinopyranosyl units as repeating sugar building blocks are found to be much stronger Watson-Crick base-pairing systems than RNA. The alpha -arabinopyranosyl system is the strongest of all and in fact belongs to the strongest oligonucleotide base-pairing systems known. Whatever the chemical determinants by which nature selected RNA as a genetic system, maximization of base-pairing strengths within the domain of pentose-derived oligonucleotide systems was not the critical selection criterion.

The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at The Scripps Research Institute, 10550 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA, and Laboratorium für Organische Chemie, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH), Universitätstrasse 16, CH-8092 Zürich, Switzerland.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed.

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)