Reduction-Responsive Guanine Incorporated into G-Quadruplex-Forming DNA.

Stimulus-responsive biomolecules are attractive targets to understand biomolecule behaviour as well as to explore their therapeutic and diagnostic applications. We demonstrate that a reduction-responsive cleavable group (chemically caged unit) introduced into the guanine ring enables modulation of the secondary structure transition of an oligonucleotide in a reduction-responsive and traceless manner leaving the unmodified oligonucleotide of interest. This simple but robust strategy could yield a variety of stimuli-responsive oligonucleotides.