Polymerase-directed synthesis of C5-ethynyl locked nucleic acids.

Modified nucleic acids have considerable potential in nanobiotechnology for the development of nanomedicines and new materials. Locked nucleic acid (LNA) is one of the most prominent nucleic acid analogues reported so far and we herein for the first time report the enzymatic incorporation of LNA-U and C5-ethynyl LNA-U nucleotides into oligonucleotides. Phusion High Fidelity and KOD DNA polymerases efficiently incorporated LNA-U and C5-ethynyl LNA-U nucleotides into a DNA strand and T7 RNA polymerase successfully accepted the LNA-U nucleoside 5'-triphosphate as substrate for RNA transcripts.