Chemical Modication of Nucleic Acids

This chapter is directed toward the chemistry of nucleic acids (oligonucleotides and polynucleotides); the chemistry of component nucleobases is considered only as necessary to understand mechanism and structure. The biology of the nucleic acids is, for the most part, ignored except where as, for example, with “footprinting” or mutagenesis, an understanding of the biology is useful for both the understanding of experimental design and interpretation of results. The chemistry for the various modication reactions is based on factors similar to those considered in the modication of protein functional groups-nucleophilicity and local electrostatic effects. The reader is directed to Chapter 1 for a discussion of factors governing the reactivity of functional groups and a listing of pKa values for nucleic acid functional groups.