G abriel A lv arad o U rb in a 3, G erald G rü b le r3, A ngelika W eilerb, H artm u t E c h n erb, Stanka S toevab, Jo h an n S ch ern th an er3, W aleri G ross3, W olfgang V oelterb * Oligonucleotides, Thio-Oligonucleotides, 5'-and 3'-Derivatisation of Oligonucleotides, Automatic O ligonucleotide Synthesis, G ene Assembly An optimized autom ated synthesizer is presented for assembling oligonucleotides, thiooligonucleotides and 5'-m odified oligonucleotides including: chemical phosphorylation, multihydroxyl derivatization with a non-nucleosidic phosphoramidite. The incorporation of biotin, fluorescein and rhodamine phosphoramidites is described. The purification and struc ture determination o f oligo-nucleotides was confirmed using high performance liquid chro matography (H PLC ), capillary electrophoresis (CE) and laser desorption mass spectrometry (LD M S). Several applications and confirming data polymerase chain reaction (PCR) experiments.