title: Alpha-oligonucleotides: a unique class of modified chimeric nucleic acids.
abstract: alpha-Anomeric oligonucleotides are resistant to nucleases and display parallel hybridization with complementary DNA and RNA sequences. Although alpha-DNA/beta-RNA duplexes are not substrates for RNases H, alpha-oligos are able to inhibit translation through a RNase H independent mechanism. alpha-Oligos and their alpha-phosphorothioate analogs (12 mer) targeted against the splice acceptor site of the HIV-TAT gene were potent inhibitors of de novo HIV infection. Furthermore alpha-phosphorothioate and dithioate homo-oligomers exhibit an in vitro, nonsequence-specific, inhibitory effect on HIV reverse transcriptase.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Chimie Bio-Organique, URA 488 du CNRS, Université Montpellier II, France.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Morvan
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Rayner
authors.forename: J L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Imbach
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D015195:Drug Design; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D015394:Molecular Structure; D009696:Nucleic Acids / Q000737:chemistry*; D009841:Oligonucleotides / Q000138:chemical synthesis* / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D009696:Nucleic Acids; D009841:Oligonucleotides