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Updated: Jul 11, 2026

Sequence-specific Labeling of Nucleic Acids and Proteins with Methyltransferases and Cofactor Analogues
Published on: November 22, 2014
Photo-regulation of RNA polymerase reaction by use of modified DNA carrying an azobenzene
H Asanuma1, D Tamaru, T Yoshida
1Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, Univ. of Tokyo, Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8904, Japan.
Abstract:
Transcription reaction by T7-RNA polymerase was photo-regulated on the basis of two strategies as depicted in Scheme 1. It was found that incorporation reaction of azobenzene-tethered uridine triphosphate proceeded only when azobenzene took trans-form (Scheme 1(A)). On the other hand, the transcription was more efficient when the azobenzene moiety, tethered to the non-template strand of the promoter DNA, was in its cis-form under UV irradiation (Scheme 1(B)). Thus, azobenzene-tethered DNAs are promising for the photo-regulation of gene-expression.
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