Stabilities of double- and triple-strand helical nucleic acids.

In this selected literature survey, we have seen that the stabilities of duplexes and triplexes are governed by the vertical base stacking, the horizontal specific base-paired H-bonding and the environmental parameters. The entropic contribution in the solvation/desolvation process is important in driving the aggregation of NA strands and duplex formation, but base stacking and specific H-bonding maintain the helical order. Triplex formation shares most of the physical environmental prerequisites with those of duplex NAs. However, some additional environmental conditions are often needed. Only in low pH solution is the polycytidylic strand protonated and, thus, it is possible for the strand to bind to a G.C duplex sequence to give the C+(G.C) triplex. High ionic strength is often necessary for the screening of inter-phosphate repulsion due to the high linear charge density in triplexes. The presence of specific counterions is important for complexation. In the absence of negative supercoiling, existence of an intramolecular triplex is rare except under very acidic conditions for the formation of C+(G.C)-type intramolecular triplex. As expected, the stabilities of both inter- and intramolecular triplexes increase with sequence length. The thermodynamic principles of helix-coil transition of oligo-duplex may be described by the van't Hoff relationship, which assumes a two-state cooperative melting profile. Thus, the enthalpy, entropy and free energy of transition can be evaluated from the experimental melting curves (e.g. OD, DSC). For polynucleotides, because of the non-two-state nature of transition, the simple van't Hoff relationship is no longer valid, and direct calorimetry is needed to obtain reliable thermodynamic parameters. The pH and salt concentration dependence of duplex stability can be formulated and derived from a van't Hoff equation. Base-stacking patterns are simple in duplexes but not so in triplexes due to the diversity in triplet schemes. The sequence dependence of base stacking for duplexes has been characterized and employed to predict the stability of an arbitrary sequence. In conclusion, the stability of duplex is relatively well-characterized by thermodynamic data in terms of both base stacking and specific H-bonding. Thermodynamic studies of triplexes have been far fewer in number. Oligonucleotides have found application in the detection and localization of a mRNA or its gene, the detection of bacterial or viral sequences, and the inhibition of the translation of mRNA and the transcription and replication of DNA (Englisch and Gauss, 1991). In a different approach, oligonucleotides have been targeted directly to a DNA duplex motif of a gene in order to inhibit the expression at the beginning of the transcriptional process.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)