Induction of endonucleolytic DNA cleavage is an essential event that links the initiating stimuli to the final effects of cells. The cleavage efficiency and thus the final yield could be affected by many factors, including structures of DNA substrates, composite structures of enzymes–substrates or enzymes–nucleic analogs and so on. However, it is not clear whether a nucleotide derivative-substituted in DNA substrates can influence the efficiency of enzymatic cleavage. To investigate the effect of sugar pucker conformation on DNA–protein interactions, we used 2′-𝑂-methyl modified nucleotides (OMeN) to modify DNA substrates of isocaudemers BamHI and BglII in this study, and used FRET assay as an efficient method for analysis of enzyme cleavage. Experimental results demonstrated that OMeN-substituted recognition sequences influenced the cleavage rates significantly in a position-dependent manner. OMeN substitutions can reduce the cleavage as expected. Surprisingly, OMeN substitutions can also enhance the cleavage rates. The kinetics parameters of 𝑉_max and 𝐾_m have been obtained by fitting the Michaelis-Menten kinetic equation. These 2′-OMe nucleotides could behave as a regulatory element to modulate the enzymatic activity in vitro, and this property could enrich our understanding about the endonuclease cleavage mechanism and enhance our ability to regulate the enzymatic cleavage efficiency for applications in synthetic biology.

Oligonucleotide microarray has been one of the most powerful tools in the ‘Post-Genome Era’ for its high sensitivity, high throughput and parallel processing capability. To achieve high detection specificity, we fabricated an isothermal microarray using locked nucleic acid (LNA)-modified oligonucleotide probes, since LNA has demonstrated the advanced ability to enhance the binding affinity toward their complementary nucleotides. After designing the nucleotide sequences of these oligonucleotide probes for gram-positive bacilli of similar origin (Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus licheniformis, Bacillus pumilus, Bacillus megaterium and Bacillus circulans), we unified the melting temperatures of these oligonucleotide probes by modifying some nucleotides using LNA. Furthermore, we optimized the experimental procedures of hydrating microarray slides, blocking side surface as well as labelling the PCR products. Experimental results revealed that KOD Dash DNA polymerase could efficiently incorporate Cy3-dCTP into the PCR products, and the LNA-isothermal oligonucleotide microarray were able to distinguish the bacilli of similar origin with a high degree of accuracy and specificity under the optimized experimental condition.