Autocatalytic photochemical reactions triggered by nucleic acids

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Sequence specific detection of nucleic acids is a crucial research aspect in biological sciences and is becoming increasingly important in diagnostics and genomics. While enzymatic methods are well established for nucleic acid detection, they have several limitations. In particular, enzymes do not recognise non-natural probes, they are often inefficient with short probes and are unlikely to be used in vivo. This justifies search for simple and reliable chemical methods of nucleic acid analysis. The best nucleic acid triggered, nonenzymatic, homogeneous reactions are as selective as enzymatic analogues in terms of sequence fidelity. However sensitivity is unsatisfactory, since majority of nonenzymatic reactions are considerably slower than enzymatic ones. Providing that the sensitivity of the nonenzymatic methods is improved, such reactions can be used in nucleic acid detection. The aim of this project is to discover autocatalytic, metal-promoted reactions, which are triggered by traces of nucleic acids and lead to exponentially growing amounts of detectable products. On this basis a simple, fully homogeneous chemical assay could be developed, which would allow detection of small amounts of nucleic acids directly from biological samples without pre-amplification.