Nucleosides, Nucleotides & Nucleic Acids 2010-01-01

Facile small scale synthesis of nucleoside 5'-phosphate mixtures.

Robert S Jansen, Hilde Rosing, Jan H M Schellens, Jos H Beijnen

Index: Nucleosides Nucleotides Nucleic Acids 29(1) , 14-26, (2010)

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Abstract

We present a facile method to phosphorylate small amounts of nucleosides (0.05 mumol) into mixtures of their 5'-mono-, di-, and triphosphates in a one-pot reaction. The nucleosides were first converted into their dichlorophosphates using a large excess (15-18 equivalents) of phosphorous oxychloride in trimethylphosphate. The large excess resulted in good dichlorophosphate yields (46-76%) for the four nucleosides tested. Upon the addition of tributylammonium-phosphate with additional tributylamine (20 equivalents both), the dichlorophosphate was converted into a mixture containing equal amounts of the mono-, di-, and triphosphate. The presented method was successfully applied to synthesize mixtures of stable isotope labeled nucleotides, which can be used as internal standards in quantitative mass spectrometric assays.