Two-terpyridine.Cu(II) complexes-containing antisense systems for rapid and highly site-specific RNA cleavage.

In an approach toward artificial ribonucleases, novel RNA cleaving systems were constructed that contained two terpyridine.Cu(II) residues. The first antisense system used tandem Cu(II) complex--2'-O-methyloligonucleotide 5'- and 3'-conjugates to cleave an RNA substrate. The second system, which will be described in a future paper, contained two contiguous Cu(II) complex residues at an internal site of a 2'-O-methyloligonucleotide. We found that the first system rapidly cleaved RNA with high site-specificity. Based on these results, we expect the second system to also show efficient RNA cleavage.