Nucleic Acids, Nucleotides, and Nucleosides Commons^™

The Role Of Coagulase-Negative Staphylococcal Secreted Products On Staphylococcus Aureus And Staphylococcus Lugdunensis Infections, Denny Chin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The Staphylococcus genus is comprised of over 40 bacterial species. The most well-studied species in this genus is the notorious human pathogen Staphylococcus aureus, a bacterium that produces coagulase among many other virulence factors. Since S. aureus is a major health burden and causes a plethora of diseases in humans, it has received significant attention and much research has been done to understand its biology to treat diseases caused by this pathogen. However, the coagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS) make up most of the staphylococcal species and have received less attention since they are thought to have a lesser impact on …

Synthesis And Photophysical Studies Of Pyrrolocytosine Derivatives, Atefeh Rouhi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Pyrrolocytosine (pC) derivatives are used in the study of nucleic acid structure, function and in the design of the hybridization probes. They have unique properties including small size and Watson-Crick base pairing capability and impressive fluorescent properties. However, they exhibit variation in the fluorescence properties upon incorporation into single-stranded DNA and double-stranded DNA.

This study analyzes the effect of the nearest neighbours on the fluorescence properties of phenylpyrrolocytosine (PhpC) and provides a guide to the proper design of the PhpC containing fluorescent probes. Moreover, the possibility of photoinduced electron transfer (PET) as the underlying mechanism of the unusual photophysical behavior …

Functionalization Of Peptide Nucleic Acids Via Post-Synthetic Click Chemistry, Xiaoxiao Wang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Peptide Nucleic Acid (PNA) has shown great potential in molecular diagnostics, antisense/antigene therapy and nanotechnology. Like other synthetic nucleic acids and artificial analogues, PNA has been extensively modified to achieve better performance in these applications. To efficiently develop PNA probes for molecular diagnosis, this thesis is focused on versatile functionalization of PNA via post-synthetic click chemistry.

Chapter 2 presents the synthesis of quencher-free PNA molecular beacons (MBs) targeting a cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) sequence mutation. To avoid the tedious synthesis of functionalized PNA monomers for probe development, a simple approach to modify PNA oligomers by post-synthetic on-resin click …

Design And Syntheses Of Novel Quenchers For Fluorescent Hybridization Probes, Mohamed Moustafa

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Since most of human diseases are related to genetic mutations, during the past two decades, identification of such mutations has attracted much attention. Detection of these mutations is mainly based hybridization with the complementary reporter probes.

Nucleic acids detection takes place by changing either the reporter’s fluorescence intensity or the colour of its fluorescence. The use of fluorescent probes for nucleic acid detection has attracted much attention due to its efficiency, the ease of synthesis and availability of commercial reporters that facilitates the probe synthesis. Nowadays, most of nucleic acid detection using fluorescent probes relies on quenching of fluorescence by …

Design And Syntheses Of Fluorescent Cytosine Analogues, David W. Dodd

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The avid hybridization of peptide nucleic acid (PNA) to DNA and RNA along with the molecule’s biological stability has led it to be used in both antisense and antigene capacities. PNA acts against translation via a steric blockade mechanism. It is therefore reasonable to assume that increased heteroduplex stability could lead to increased potency. Two ways of doing this were explored. I) N-Terminal attachment of a platinous chloride chelating moiety to PNA complementary to Xenopus noggin was synthesized with the objective of selective, covalent platination of the target transcript in vivo. Phenotypes consistent with knockdown of the selected …