Preparative isolation of oligonucleotides from chemically degraded DNA.

A simple alternative to complicated chemical synthesis of oligonucleotides is presented. Readily available DNA is partially hydrolyzed to preparative amounts of oligonucleotides using various methods. Chromatographically, pure defined pyrimidine and purine nucleotides, and/or mixtures of sequence isomers, are isolated on preparative scale from the various mixtures of oligonucleotides.