Solid-phase Synthesis of Polynucleotides. VIII: A Simplified Synthesis of Oligodeoxyribonucleotides

The availability of synthetic DNA with defined sequences has had a profound effect on many biological studies (Itakura and Riggs 1980). Particularly in connection with the advent of molecular cloning technology, the demand for synthetic DNA has been explosive (Razin et al. 1978; Suggs et al. 1981). Oligodeoxyribonucleotides have found uses in almost every phase of recombinant DNA research, including construction, identification, and characterization of particular clones, as well as manipulation of the isolated, cloned DNA to modify its structure, DNA sequence, or mode of gene expression. Furthermore, they have also found applications in the structural analysis of DNA itself. The availability of large quantities of pure, short DNA fragments permitted us to crystallize short DNA duplexes for X-ray crystallographic analysis (Wang et al. 1979; Drew et al. 1980).