Molecular design of artificial hydrolytic nucleases and ribonucleases.

Artificial nucleases and ribonucleases, which selectively hydrolyze the specific phosphodiester linkages in DNAs and RNAs, are prepared by the attachment of organic and inorganic catalysts to DNA oligomers as sequence-recognizing moieties. A hybrid of ethylenediamine and a 19-mer DNA selectively hydrolyzes tRNA(Phe) at the 3'-side of C63. Site-selective hydrolysis of DNAs has been accomplished by the lanthanide complexes bound to DNA oligomers. No concurrent oxidative cleavage of the ribose or the deoxyribose takes place.