Impact of stereopure chimeric backbone chemistries on the potency and durability of gene silencing by RNA interference.

Herein, we report the systematic investigation of stereopure phosphorothioate (PS) and phosphoryl guanidine (PN) linkages on siRNA-mediated silencing. The incorporation of appropriately positioned and configured stereopure PS and PN linkages to N-acetylgalactosamine (GalNAc)-conjugated siRNAs based on multiple targets (Ttr and HSD17B13) increased potency and durability of mRNA silencing in mouse hepatocytes in vivo compared with reference molecules based on clinically proven formats. The observation that the same modification pattern had beneficial effects on unrelated transcripts suggests that it may be generalizable. The effect of stereopure PN modification on silencing is modulated by 2'-ribose modifications in the vicinity, particularly on the nucleoside 3' to the linkage. These benefits corresponded with both an increase in thermal instability at the 5'-end of the antisense strand and improved Argonaute 2 (Ago2) loading. Application of one of our most effective designs to generate a GalNAc-siRNA targeting human HSD17B13 led to ∼80% silencing that persisted for at least 14 weeks after administration of a single 3 mg/kg subcutaneous dose in transgenic mice. The judicious use of stereopure PN linkages improved the silencing profile of GalNAc-siRNAs without disrupting endogenous RNA interference pathways and without elevating serum biomarkers for liver dysfunction, suggesting they may be suitable for therapeutic application.

MolFind2: A Protocol for Acquiring and Integrating MS3 Data to Improve In Silico Chemical Structure Elucidation for Metabolomics.

Structure elucidation of metabolites (<1000 Da) in biofluids is extremely challenging due to the diversity and complexity of chemical structure space. Generally, due to lack of reference tandem mass data (MS2), in silico fragmenters are used to rank candidates acquired from chemical databases as a function on how well they explain an experimental collision-induced dissociation spectrum. However, multistage fragmentation data (i.e., MS3) have not been adequately utilized in current metabolomics structure elucidation pipelines. To address this shortcoming, here we describe an experimental (nontargeted direct infusion ion mobility-mass spectrometry-based) and computational workflow to acquire and utilize multistage mass (MS3) spectrometry data for database-assisted structure elucidation.

Evaluation of an Artificial Neural Network Retention Index Model for Chemical Structure Identification in Nontargeted Metabolomics.

Liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (LC-ESI-MS/MS) is a major analytical technique used for nontargeted identification of metabolites in biological fluids. Typically, in LC-ESI-MS/MS based database assisted structure elucidation pipelines, the exact mass of an unknown compound is used to mine a chemical structure database to acquire an initial set of possible candidates. Subsequent matching of the collision induced dissociation (CID) spectrum of the unknown to the CID spectra of candidate structures facilitates identification. However, this approach often fails because of the large numbers of potential candidates (i.e., false positives) for which CID spectra are not available. To overcome this problem, CID fragmentation predication programs have been developed, but these also have limited success if large numbers of isomers with similar CID spectra are present in the candidate set. In this study, we investigated the use of a retention index (RI) predictive model as an orthogonal method to help improve identification rates. The model was used to eliminate candidate structures whose predicted RI values differed significantly from the experimentally determined RI value of the unknown compound. We tested this approach using a set of ninety-one endogenous metabolites and four in silico CID fragmentation algorithms: CFM-ID, CSI:FingerID, Mass Frontier, and MetFrag. Candidate sets obtained from PubChem and the Human Metabolite Database (HMDB) were ranked with and without RI filtering followed by in silico spectral matching. Upon RI filtering, 12 of the ninety-one metabolites were eliminated from their respective candidate sets, i.e., were scored incorrectly as negatives. For the remaining seventy-nine compounds, we show that RI filtering eliminated an average of 58% from PubChem candidate sets. This resulted in an approximately 2-fold improvement in average rankings when using CFM-ID, Mass Frontier, and MetFrag. In addition, RI filtering slightly increased the occurrence of number one rankings for all 4 fragmentation algorithms. However, RI filtering did not significantly improve average rankings when HMDB was used as the candidate database, nor did it significantly improve average rankings when using CSI:FingerID. Overall, we show that the current RI model incorrectly eliminated more true positives (12) than were expected (4-5) on the basis of the filtering method. However, it slightly improved the number of correct first place rankings and improved overall average rankings when using CFM-ID, Mass Frontier, and MetFrag.

Chromene-Annulated Bacteriochlorins.

Syntheses and optical properties of mono- and bis-chromene-annulated bacteriochlorins are described. Known monochromene-annulated meso-(pentafluorophenyl)chlorin is susceptible to a regioselective OsO4-mediated dihydroxylation, generating two monochromene-annulated trihydroxybacteriochlorin stereoisomers: either the newly introduced vic-cis-diol functionality is on the same side as the vic-cis-diol moiety the chromene-annulation was based on or on the opposite side. Treatment of the two isomers with heat or base generates different sets of bis-chromene-annulated bacteriochlorin stereo- and regioisomers. Detailed 1D and 2D (1)H and (19)F NMR spectroscopic investigations allowed the characterization of the isomers that formed. The regioselectivity of the second annulation reaction was rationalized computationally on steric grounds. The bacteriochlorin-type optical spectra of the mono- and bis-chromene-annulated bacteriochlorins are modulated as a result of the annulation, with each isomer possessing a unique spectrum, attributed to the effects the regiochemically distinct annulations have on the conformation of the chromophore. The formation of a bis-chromene-annulated chlorin from the bacteriochlorins is also described, including its X-ray crystal structure, revealing some details of the metrics of the chromene-annulated moiety. The vic-diol functionality of monochromene-annulated trihydroxybacteriochlorins is also susceptible to oxidation and ring-expansion reactions, generating chromene-annulated pyrrole-modified chlorins incorporating oxazolone and morpholine moieties. The work expands the body of work on the synthesis and optical fine-tuning of meso-aryl-substituted bacteriochlorins.

Thermodynamics of the quasi-epitaxial flavin assembly around various-chirality carbon nanotubes.

Establishing methods to accurately assess and model the binding strength of surfactants around a given-chirality single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) are crucial for selective enrichment, targeted functionalization, and spectrally sharp nanodevices. Unlike surfactant exchange, which is subject to interferences from the second surfactant, we herein introduce a thermal dissociation method based on reversible H(+)/O2 doping to determine SWNT/surfactant thermodynamic stability values with greater fidelity. Thermodynamic values were reproduced using molecular mechanics augmented by ab initio calculations in order to better assess π-π interactions. This afforded detailed quantification of the flavin binding strength in terms of π-π stacking (55-58%), with the remaining portion roughly split 3:1 between electrostatic plus van der Waals flavin mononucleotide (FMN) interdigitation and H-bonding interactions, respectively. Quasi-epitaxial π-π alignment between the near-armchair FMN helix and the underlying nanotube lattice plays a crucial role in stabilizing these assemblies. The close resemblance of the thermal dissociation method to helix-coil and ligand-binding transitions of DNA opens up a unique insight into the molecular engineering of self-organizing surfactants around various-chirality nanotubes.

Stability of N-glycosidic bond of (5'S)-8,5'-cyclo-2'-deoxyguanosine.

8,5'-Cyclopurine deoxynucleosides are unique tandem lesions containing an additional covalent bond between the base and the sugar. These mutagenic and genotoxic lesions are repaired only by nucleotide excision repair. The N-glycosidic (or C1'-N9) bond of 2'-deoxyguanosine (dG) derivatives is usually susceptible to acid hydrolysis, but even after cleavage of this bond of the cyclopurine lesions, the base would remain attached to the sugar. Here, the stability of the N-glycosidic bond and the products formed by formic acid hydrolysis of (5'S)-8,5'-cyclo-2'-deoxyguanosine (S-cdG) were investigated. For comparison, the stability of the N-glycosidic bond of 8,5'-cyclo-2',5'-dideoxyguanosine (ddcdG), 8-methyl-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-Me-dG), 7,8-dihydro-8-oxo-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-Oxo-dG), and dG was also studied. In various acid conditions, S-cdG and ddcdG exhibited similar stability to hydrolysis. Likewise, 8-Me-dG and dG showed comparable stability, but the half-lives of the cyclic dG lesions were at least 5-fold higher than those of dG or 8-Me-dG. NMR studies were carried out to investigate the products formed after the cleavage of the C1'-N9 bond. 2-Deoxyribose generated α and ß anomers of deoxyribopyranose and deoxyribopyranose oligomers following acid treatment. S-cdG gave α- and ß-deoxyribopyranose linked guanine as the major products, but α and ß anomers of deoxyribofuranose linked guanine and other products were also detected. The N-glycosidic bond of 8-Oxo-dG was found exceptionally stable in acid. Computational studies determined that both the protonation of the N7 atom and the rate constant in the bond breaking step control the overall kinetics of hydrolysis, but both varied for the molecules studied indicating a delicate balance between the two steps. Nevertheless, the computational approach successfully predicted the trend observed experimentally. For 8-Oxo-dG, the low pK(a) of O(8) and N3 prevented appreciable protonation, making the free energy for N-glycosidic bond cleavage in the subsequent step very high.