Physico-chemical and biological properties of antisense phosphodiester oligonucleotides with various secondary structures.

The influence of the secondary structure of oligonucleotides having a natural phosphodiester backbone on their ability to interact with DNA and RNA targets and on their resistance to the nucleolytic digestion is investigated. Oligonucleotides having hairpin, looped and snail-like structure are found to be much more stable to nuclease degradation in different biological media and inside cells than the linear ones. The structured oligonucleotides can also hybridise with their DNA and RNA targets.