Synthetic Biology and Genetic Engineering

During the last decades oligonucleotides has become a universal instrument for such fields as molecular biology, medicine and biophysics. The development of synthetic approaches for modification of RNA and DNA oligonucleotides for creating derivatives and analogues – is crucially important field which significantly broadens the possible spectrum of their application.

One of the perspective usage of oligonucleotides as a molecular tool for biophysics and synthetic biology research – is their combination with small molecules (labels) such as fluorophores or spin labels which could produce physical signal. The present work is dedicated to the development of synthetic approaches for incorporation of spin labels into the arbitrary sites of DNA oligonucleotides and their further usage for interspin distance measurements.

The separate problem which has been partially solved during this work is the development of approaches for providing interspin distance measurements within Nucleic Acids using DEER EPR technique at room temperature.

The combination of developed Nucleic Acid spin-labeling approaches with enzymatic approaches for gene synthesis, such as Polymerase chain reacton and ligation allow ones to synthesize long spin-labeled DNA or RNA polynucleotides which could be used for structural studies of biologically important nucleoprotein complexes provided by NMR, EPR for facilitating achievements of structural biology.