Photochemical immobilization of anthraquinone conjugated oligonucleotides and PCR amplicons on solid surfaces

Ligand immobilization on solid surfaces is an essential step in fields such as diagnostics, bio sensor manufacturing, and new material sciences in gen eral. In this paper a photochemical approach based on anthraquinone as the chromophore is presented. Photochemical procedures offer special advantages as they are able to generate highly reactive species in an orientation spe cific manner. As presented here, anthraquinone (AQ) mediated covalent DNA i mmobilization appears to be superior to currently known procedures. A synth etic procedure providing AQ-phosphoramidites is presented. These reagents f acilitate AQ conjugation during routine DNA synthesis, thus enabling the AQ -oligonucleotides to be immobilized in a very convenient and efficient mann er. AQ-conjugated PCR primers can be used directly in PCR. When the PCR is performed in solution, the amplicons can be immobilized after the PCR. More over, when the primers are immobilized prior to the PCR, a solid-phase PCR can be performed and the amplicons are thus produced directly on the solid support.