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Regulating Gene Expression With Light-Activated Oligonucleotides, Julianne C. Griepenburg

Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations

The work in this thesis identifies new photochemical approaches to gain high spatiotemporal control over molecular structure and function, for broad applications in materials and biological science. "Caged" compounds provide a method for temporarily blocking function until acted upon by an external trigger, typically near-UV light. To enable multiplexing studies, three new biomolecular caging strategies were developed that can be activated with various wavelengths of near-UV or visible light. The first method, an oligonucleotide hairpin structure incorporating one or two nitrobenzyl photolinkers, was applied to a miRNA antagomir and used to "turn off" let-7 miRNA in zebrafish embryos with 365 …