Abstract An essential and challenging task during the development of our sequencing-by- synthesis (SBS) technique is the evaluation of efficient cyanoethyl (CE) cleavage conditions. For this purpose 3′-O-(2-cyanoethyl)-2′-deoxythymidine-5′-phosphate as a model compound as well as a short DNA oligomer bearing the CE function as terminal group were synthesized and used for various deprotection experiments. As it is already known for 2′- ...