Molecular beacon probes of photodamage in thymine and uracil oligonucleotides.

Molecular beacons (MB) are becoming more common as sequence-selective detectors of nucleic acids. Although they can easily detect single-base mismatches, they have never been used to directly detect DNA or RNA damage. To measure the degree of ultraviolet (UV) light damage in oligonucleotides, we report a novel MB approach for general detection of photoproducts in UV-irradiated rU17 and dT17 oligonucleotides.