Specific recognition of pyrophosphate in nucleotides

The lipophilic diammonium cation 1 was demonstrated to be a reagent to discriminate the number of the phosphate in nucleotides. Thus the highly hydrophilic nucleotides were selectively extracted into an organic phase by the formation of ion-pairs and selectively transported through a membrane by a carrier mechanism. The compound was also shown to be an efficient phase transfer reagent which activated the phosphate anion of AMP to give a facile synthesis of pyrophosphate linkages, ADP and ATP, without any protection of the sugar moiety.