Biochemistry of Nucleic Acids Functionalized
with Sulfur, Selenium, and Tellurium:
Roles of the Single-Atom Substitution
Nucleic acids and their modifications are instrumental
in discovering functional oligonucleotides as important
biochemical and therapeutic agents. In the search of bioactive
compounds, a variety of synthetic strategies have been
developed to design novel analogs of the nucleosides,
nucleotides, and nucleic acids. Since oxygen atoms are
found in abundance in natural nucleic acids, the atom-specific
replacement of these oxygen atoms with the heavier chalcogens
sulfur, selenium, and tellurium facilitates generation of
novel nucleic acids with distinctive properties, such as
enhanced duplex stability, binding affinity, nuclease resistance,
bioavailability, and base-pair fidelity. These structural
alterations create a new archetype of nucleic acids with
potential applications in therapeutics and drug development.
Moreover, these engineered nucleic acids are useful biological
tools for disease detection, molecular sensing, and fundamental
understanding of nucleic acid structures and functions. This
review outlines sulfur, selenium, and tellurium modifications
to nucleic acids and their role in generating new classes of
nucleic acids with tunable biochemical and physico-chemical
properties. Such modifications offer structural, functional,
and mechanistic probes for investigating the structures and
biological functions of nucleic acids (DNA and RNA).
