Synthesis of backbone deuterium labelled [r(CGCGAAUUCGCG)]2 and HPLC purification of synthetic RNA.

The chemical synthesis of backbone deuterium labelled [r(CGCGAAU*U*CGCG)]2 (U* = [5'-2H]U) is described. An efficient purification procedure was developed using a polymeric reverse phase (PRP) HPLC column at 60 degrees C. This procedure provided pure RNA dodecamer in the multi-milligram quantities (39% overall yield) necessary for dynamics studies using solid-state deuterium NMR. The purification method has been effectively applied to other RNA sequences and will assist biophysical studies which require relatively large quantities of RNA oligomers.