Pushing a bistable [2]rotaxane out of equilibrium and isolation of the metastable-state co-conformation.

Incorporating a steric barrier between the two stations in a bistable [2]rotaxane based on monopyrrolotetrathiafulvalene and cyclobis(paraquat--phenylene) allows the high-energy metastable-state co-conformation to be physically isolated following a single redox cycle, thus making it possible to store energy (4.4 J L) and to follow its interconversion back to the ground-state co-conformation.

Double-Headed 2'-Deoxynucleotides That Hybridize to DNA and RNA Targets via Normal and Reverse Watson-Crick Base Pairs.

Through the use of modified nucleotides, synthetic nucleic acids have found several fields of application within biotechnology and in the pharmaceutical industry. We have previously introduced nucleotides with an additional functional nucleobase linked to C2' of arabinonucleotides (). These double-headed nucleotides fit neatly into DNA·DNA duplexes, where they can replace the corresponding natural dinucleotides and thus condense the molecular information.

Double-headed nucleic acids condense the molecular information of DNA to half the number of nucleotides.

Nucleotide monomers that hold two nucleobases each, double-headed nucleotides, have been shown to form two sets of functional Watson-Crick base pairs when incorporated into dsDNA, and they hereby behave as dinucleotides. To form the basis for fully modified double-headed nucleic acids (DhNA), we have prepared three new DhNA monomers and can now demonstrate that the molecular information of 10 Watson-Crick base pairs can be condensed to highly stable 5-mer DhNA duplexes.

Double-headed nucleotides as xeno nucleic acids: information storage and polymerase recognition.

Xeno nucleic acids (XNAs) are artificial genetic systems based on sugar-modified nucleotides. Herein, we investigate double-headed nucleotides as a new XNA. A new monomer, AT, is presented, and together with previous double-headed nucleotide monomers, new nucleic acid motifs consisting of up to five consecutive A·T base pairs have been obtained.