Photochemical ligation between anthracene-DNA conjugates and its analytical application to gene analysis.

Anthracene readily forms photoadducts (anthracene dimers). The reaction generally requires close proximity and certain spatial alignment of both reaction partners. DNA could provide an ideal scaffold for accelerating the reaction, photocyclic addition. We synthesized a number of anthracene-DNA conjugates. The sequences of the conjugates, 5'AntODN and 3'AntODN, were designed to bind adjacent sequences of the template with the anthracene units directed such that they stacked with each other. The conjugates were only dimerized in the presence of the template by light irradiation. The efficiency of dimerization was dependent on the structure of the conjugates and affected by one-base displacement in the template sequence.