Molecular beacons with intrinsically fluorescent nucleotides

Molecular beacons with intrinsically fluorescent nucleotides

We report the design, synthesis and characterization of a novel molecular beacon (MB-FB) which uses the fluorescent bases (FB) 2-aminopurine (AP) and pyrrolo-dC (P-dC) as fluorophores. Because the quantum yield of these FB depend on hybridization with complementary target, the fluorescent properties of MB-FB were tuned by placing the FB site specifically within the MB such that hybridization wi...

Cholesterol-linked fluorescent molecular beacons with enhanced cell permeability.

We appended pyrene units covalently onto adenosine (forming A(P) units) and then incorporated them into oligonucleotides such that they were positioned in complementary locations in opposite strands in the middle positions of hairpin stems. System 1 (A(P)A(P)) behaves as an effective molecular beacon (MB) that changes color from green to blue upon duplex formation. In addition, we attached a ch...

Real-time assays with molecular beacons and other fluorescent nucleic acid hybridization probes.

BACKGROUND A number of formats for nucleic acid hybridization have been developed to identify DNA and RNA sequences that are involved in cellular processes and that aid in the diagnosis of genetic and infectious diseases. METHODS The introduction of hybridization probes with interactive fluorophore pairs has enabled the development of homogeneous hybridization assays for the direct identifica...

Inventing Molecular Beacons

Tripartite molecular beacons.

Molecular beacons (MBs) are hairpin-like fluorescent DNA probes that have single-mismatch detection capability. Although they are extremely useful for many solution-based nucleic acid detections, MBs are expensive probes for applications that require the use of a large number of different DNA probes due to the high cost and tedious procedures associated with probe synthesis and purification. In...