Chemical Synthesis of Oligonucleotides
Oligonucleotides are chemically synthesized using nucleotides, called phosphoramidites, normal nucleotides which have protection groups: preventing amine, hydroxyl groups and phosphate groups interacting incorrectly. One phosphoramidite is added at a time, the product's 5' phosphate is deprotected and a new base is added and so on (backwards), at the end, all the protection groups are removed. Nevertheless, being a chemical process, several incorrect interactions occur leading to some defective products. The longer the oligonucleotide sequence that is being synthesized, the more defects there are, thus this process is only practical for producing short sequences of nucleotides. The current practical limit is about 200 bp for an oligonucleotide with sufficient quality to be used directly for a biological application. HPLC can be used to isolate products with the proper sequence. Meanwhile a large number of oligos can be synthesized in parallel on gene chips. For optimal performance in subsequent gene synthesis procedures they should be prepared individually and in larger scales.
Read more about this topic: Artificial Gene Synthesis, Standard Methods
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