PUBLICATION

Direct Activation of Nucleobases with Small Molecules for the Conditional Control of Antisense Function

Authors
Bardhan, A., Brown, W., Albright, S., Tsang, M., Davidson, L., Deiters, A.
ID
ZDB-PUB-240228-2
Date
2024
Source
Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English)   63(17): e202318773 (Journal)
Registered Authors
Tsang, Michael
Keywords
Xenopus, antisense, conditional gene knockdown, morpholino, zebrafish
MeSH Terms
  • Animals
  • Mammals
  • Morpholinos/genetics
  • Morpholinos/pharmacology
  • Oligonucleotides*
  • Oligonucleotides, Antisense
  • Phenotype
  • Zebrafish*
PubMed
38411401 Full text @ Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl.
Abstract
Conditionally controlled antisense oligonucleotides provide precise interrogation of gene function at different developmental stages in animal models. Few examples of small molecule-induced activation of antisense function exist, and have been restricted to cyclic morpholinos, which can have significant background activity in the absence of the trigger. Here, we provide a new approach by introducing azido-caged nucleobases that are site-specifically introduced into antisense morpholinos. The caging group design is a simple azidomethylene (Azm) group that, despite its very small size, blocks Watson-Crick base pairing in a programmable fashion. Furthermore, it undergoes facile decaging via Staudinger reduction when exposed to a small molecule phosphine, generating the native antisense oligonucleotide under conditions compatible with biological environments. We demonstrated small molecule-induced gene knockdown in mammalian cells, zebrafish embryos, and Xenopus embryos. We validate the general applicability of this approach by targeting three different genes.
Genes / Markers
Figures
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Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Antibodies
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping