The cleavage of short chimeric oligonucleotides containing only one reactive ribonucleoside unit, all other nucleosides being 2'-O-methylated, has been studied at pH 8.5 and 35 degrees C. Among the 20 different sequences that did not exhibit any tendency to form a defined secondary structure, the scissile 5'-UpA-3' and 5'-CpA-3' phosphodiester bonds experienced >100- and up to 35-fold reactivity differences, respectively. Compared with dinucleoside monophosphates, both rate accelerations and retardations of more than one order of magnitude were observed. Even a change of a single base several nucleosides away from the scissile bond markedly affected the reaction rate. Duplex formation at the 3'- and/or 5'-side of the scissile bond was also studied and observed to be strongly rate retarding. The origin of the high sensitivity of phosphodiester bonds to the molecular environment is discussed.

This review discusses the effects the secondary structure of an RNA molecule has on the inherent reactivity of its phosphodiester bonds, and on the catalytic activity of metal ion-based cleaving agents. The basic principles of the intramolecular transesterification of RNA phosphodiester bonds, particularly cleavage, are first briefly described. Studies of the structural effects on the cleavage, in the absence and in the presence of metal ion catalysts, are then reviewed, and the sources of the reactivity differences observed in different structures are discussed.

This work studies the effect of RNA structure on the reactivity of RNA phosphodiester bonds. The aim of the study is to evaluate those structural parameters that affect reactivity to support the development of sequence-specific RNA cleaving agents. The cleavage of phosphodiester bonds within one-to five-nucleotide bulges has been studied in buffer solutions (pH 8.4), and in the presence of Zn 2ϩ aqua ion (pH 6.4) or its 1,5,9-triazacyclododecane complex (pH 7.4). Molecular modelling has been applied to study the structure of the substrates. The basis of the reactivity and the catalytic potential of metal ion-based cleaving agents are discussed.

The effect of base sequence on the structure and flexibility of linear single-stranded RNA molecules and the influence of the base sequence on phosphodiester bond reactivity have been studied. Molecular dynamics simulations of 2.1 ns were carried out for nine chimeric oligonucleotides containing only one unsubstituted ribo unit, all the rest of sugars being 2'-O-methylated. The base sequence has recently been reported to make a big contribution to the reactivity of these compounds. A detailed examination of the interaction energies between the base moieties shows that base stacking is strongly context-dependent and cooperative. The strength of stacking at the site susceptible to chain cleavage by intramolecular transesterification was observed to be dependent on both the flanking bases of the cleavage site and those further apart in the molecule. The interaction energies between the bases in the vicinity of the scissile linkage were found to correlate well with the experimental phosphodiester bond cleavage rates: the stronger the bases close to the cleavage site are stacked, the slower the cleavage rate is.