30
September 2004
DNA templates: reaction time
Reaction discovery — the search for ways of making the synthesis of an organic compound possible or more efficient — sounds like the Indiana Jones side of organic chemistry. But for the best part of 200 years the methodology has been much the same: solve a series of specific problems by exposing a mix of suitable substrates to different reaction conditions or catalysts, look for the desired product, then do it again under different conditions. An alternative strategy, developed at Harvard's Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, gives chemical adventurers the chance of exploring a wider area of chemical reactivity. This uses a diverse range of substrates tethered to DNA strands, with base pairing of matching strands facilitating reactions between compatible substrates. By harnessing the power of PCR amplification and DNA microarray analysis, the approach should allow the rapid screening of large pools of diverse substrates in a single solution, to identify all reactive substrate combinations.
Reaction discovery enabled by DNA-templated
synthesis and in vitro selection
MATTHEW W. KANAN, MARY M. ROZENMAN, KAORI SAKURAI,
THOMAS M. SNYDER & DAVID R. LIU
Nature 431, 545–549 (2004); doi:10.1038/nature02920
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