title: The structural diversity of artificial genetic polymers.
abstract: Synthetic genetics is a subdiscipline of synthetic biology that aims to develop artificial genetic polymers (also referred to as xeno-nucleic acids or XNAs) that can replicate in vitro and eventually in model cellular organisms. This field of science combines organic chemistry with polymerase engineering to create alternative forms of DNA that can store genetic information and evolve in response to external stimuli. Practitioners of synthetic genetics postulate that XNA could be used to safeguard synthetic biology organisms by storing genetic information in orthogonal chromosomes. XNA polymers are also under active investigation as a source of nuclease resistant affinity reagents (aptamers) and catalysts (xenozymes) with practical applications in disease diagnosis and treatment. In this review, we provide a structural perspective on known antiparallel duplex structures in which at least one strand of the Watson-Crick duplex is composed entirely of XNA. Currently, only a handful of XNA structures have been archived in the Protein Data Bank as compared to the more than 100 000 structures that are now available. Given the growing interest in xenobiology projects, we chose to compare the structural features of XNA polymers and discuss their potential to access new regions of nucleic acid fold space.
authors.affiliation: The Biodesign Institute, Virginia G. Piper Center for Personalized Diagnostics, School of Molecular Sciences, Magnetic Resonance Research Center, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-5001, USA.
authors.forename: Irina
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Anosova
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry, Center for Structural Biology, and Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center, Vanderbilt University, School of Medicine, Nashville, TN 37232-0146, USA.
authors.forename: Ewa A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Kowal
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of California-Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697, USA.
authors.forename: Matthew R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Dunn
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of California-Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697, USA jchaput@uci.edu.
authors.forename: John C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Chaput
authors.affiliation: The Biodesign Institute, Virginia G. Piper Center for Personalized Diagnostics, School of Molecular Sciences, Magnetic Resonance Research Center, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-5001, USA wade.van.horn@asu.edu.
authors.forename: Wade D
authors.initials: WD
authors.lastname: Van Horn
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry, Center for Structural Biology, and Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center, Vanderbilt University, School of Medicine, Nashville, TN 37232-0146, USA martin.egli@vanderbilt.edu.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Egli
mesh_terms: D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D009696:Nucleic Acids / Q000737:chemistry*; D011108:Polymers / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D009696:Nucleic Acids; D011108:Polymers