Sugar-Modified Nucleic Acid Analogues as Potential Materials for Genomic Technologies

Chemical modifications of natural nucleic acid architecture are well known to be potential for development of highly functional oligonucleotide analogues applicable to various genomic technologies, e.g. antisense and antigene methodologies, and numerous kinds of artificial nucleic acids have been developed to date. Chemical modifications of natural nucleic acids can be classified into three categories: nucleobase, internucleoside linkage and sugar modifications. Among these categories, sugar modifications have been received as the most promising way to develop practical oligonucleotide analogues for various genomic technologies in recent years. This review focused on sugar-modified nucleosides and their oligonucleotide derivatives.