2-Amino Purine (2-AP) is a fluorescent molecule that is classified as an adenine and guanine analog, and thus can pair with both thymine and cytosine bases (1). It is an attractive choice for use as a probe in nucleic acid secondary structural studies, both because its fluorescence is highly sensitive to the nature of the local environment, and because it usually does not significantly affect duplex stability (2). Examples include the hairpin-loop structure of the (CAG)8 repeat, involved in several neurodegenerative disorders—2AP substituted for A (3), the G-quadruplex telomeric structure [AGGG(TTAGGG)3]—2AP substitute for A (4). 2-AP also has been used to characterize the effects of DNA mismatch repair on mutagenesis induced by several different nucleoside analogs (5).
References
1. Negishi, K.; Bessho, T.; Hayatsu, H. Nucleoside and nucleobase analog mutagens. Mutat. Res. (1994), 318: 227-238.
2. Ballin, J.D., et al. Local RNA Conformational Dynamics Revealed by 2-Aminopurine Solvent Accessibility. Biochemistry (2008), 47: 7043-7052.
3. Degtyareva, N.N.; Reddish, M.J.; Sengupta, B.; Petty, J.T. Structural Studies of a Trinucleotide Repeat Sequence Using 2-Aminopurine. Biochemistry (2009), 48: 2340-2346.
4. Kimura, T.; Kawai, K.; Fujitsuka, M.; Tetsuro, M. Monitoring G-quadruplex structures and G-quadruplex-ligand complex using 2-aminopurine modified oligonucleotides. Tetrahedron (2007), 63: 3585-3590.
5. Negishi, K.; et al. Binding specificities of the mismatch binding protein, MutS, to oligonucleotides containing modified bases. Nucleic Acids Res. Supplement No. 1 (2001), 221-222.
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