Nonenzymatic Oligomerization of Ribonucleotides on Guanosine‐Rich Templates: Suppression of the Self‐Pairing of Guanosine

Acridine-labeled primers have been shown to be a very valuable tool for the study of the template-directed oligomerization of RNA (shown schematically below). Conditions for the efficient incorporation of cytidine have been established by using such compounds. The aggregation of guanosine-rich templates, which has long been considered a major obstacle for nonenzymatic replication of RNA, can thus be reduced to a minimum.