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Updated: Mar 13, 2026

Fluorescence Based Primer Extension Technique to Determine Transcriptional Starting Points and Cleavage Sites of RNases In Vivo
Published on: October 31, 2014
Effect of terminal 3'-hydroxymethyl modification of an RNA primer on nonenzymatic primer extension
Ayan Pal1, Rajat S Das2, Weicheng Zhang3
1Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Molecular Biology and Center for Computational and Integrative Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital, 185 Cambridge Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02114, USA. szostak@molbio.mgh.harvard.edu and Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, 77 Avenue Louis Pasteur, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.
Abstract:
The significance of the precise position of the hydroxyl at the 3'-end of an RNA primer for nonenzymatic template-directed primer extension is not well understood. We show that an RNA primer terminating in 3'-hydroxymethyl-2',3'-dideoxy-guanosine has greatly diminished activity, suggesting that the spatial preorganization of the terminal sugar contributes significantly to the efficiency of primer extension.
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