Selection of nucleic acid chemistry for therapeutic aptamer design.

A series of modified nucleotides will be synthesized and tested for their properties to function as substrate for mutated thermophilic polymerases. This will allow us to select appropriate chemistry for the selection of therapeutic aptamers, useful for the treatment of a wide variety of human diseases and infections (generic approach). Primarily extracellular targets will be envisaged. The project will run in three steps, first organic synthesis of modified nucleotides and oligonucleotides, second the study of the substrate specificity of the modified nucleotides for mutated polymerase and third, the selection of aptamers using the selex approach for two representative examples.