Controlling oligonucleotide function with light

ORGN 736

Douglas D. Young, ddyoung@unity.ncsu.edu and Alexander Deiters, alex_deiters@ncsu.edu. Department of Chemistry, North Carolina State University, 2620 Yarbrough Drive, Box 8204, Raleigh, NC 27695
Recent developments have established the versatility of RNA for biotechnological applications, demonstrating its ability to bind small molecules, peptides and proteins, to catalyze reactions, and to regulate gene function via ribozymes, riboswitches, and RNAi. Our research aims to advance these discoveries by developing of methodologies to control these processes with light. As an example we will show new photoprotected nucleotides which can serve as building blocks for the construction of photocaged aptamers, ribozymes, siRNAs, etc. This will allow for a higher degree of spatial and temporal control of RNA function and have applications towards the photochemical study of gene functions.