Department of Chemistry , Stanford University , Stanford , California 94305 , United States.
J Am Chem Soc. 2018 Mar 14;140(10):3491-3495. doi: 10.1021/jacs.7b12408. Epub 2018 Mar 1.
External photocontrol over RNA function has emerged as a useful tool for studying nucleic acid biology. Most current methods rely on fully synthetic nucleic acids with photocaged nucleobases, limiting application to relatively short synthetic RNAs. Here we report a method to gain photocontrol over RNA by postsynthetic acylation of 2'-hydroxyls with photoprotecting groups. One-step introduction of these groups efficiently blocks hybridization, which is restored after light exposure. Polyacylation (termed cloaking) enables control over a hammerhead ribozyme, illustrating optical control of RNA catalytic function. Use of the new approach on a transcribed 237 nt RNA aptamer demonstrates the utility of this method to switch on RNA folding in a cellular context, and underlines the potential for application in biological studies.
外部光控 RNA 功能已成为研究核酸生物学的有用工具。目前大多数方法依赖于带有光封闭碱基的全合成核酸，这限制了它们在相对较短的合成 RNA 中的应用。在此，我们报告了一种通过用光保护基团对 2'-羟基进行后合成酰化来获得 RNA 光控的方法。这些基团的一步引入可有效阻止杂交，而在光照后可恢复杂交。多酰化（称为伪装）使锤头核酶受到控制，说明了 RNA 催化功能的光学控制。在转录的 237nt RNA 适体上使用新方法证明了该方法在细胞环境中打开 RNA 折叠的实用性，并强调了在生物学研究中应用的潜力。
