Unrestricted hybridization of oligonucleotides to structure-free DNA

The existence of secondary structure in long single-stranded DNA and RNA is a serious obstacle to the practical use of short oligonucleotide probes (<20-mers). Here, we show that replication of a highly structured DNA in the presence of a unique set of dNTP analogues leads to synthesis of daughter DNA with a significantly reduced level of secondary structure. This replicated DNA, composed of 2-aminoadenine, 2-thiothymine, 7-deazaguanine, and cytosine bases, was readily accessible to tiled 8-mer LNA and 15-mer DNA probes, whereas an unmodified version of the same DNA was inaccessible. Importantly, while the base analogues enhanced probe-target stability, they did not significantly reduce the specificity of base pairing. The availability of structure-free DNA targets should facilitate the use of short oligonucleotide probes and promote development of generic oligonucleotide microarrays.