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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Jun 1.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Chem Biol. 2014 Oct 12;10(12):1049–1054. doi: 10.1038/nchembio.1655

Figure 1. Electrophilic probes for the discovery of unusually nucleophilic RNA.

Figure 1

(a) Electrophilic small molecules with carefully tailored reactivity selectively react with unusually nucleophilic RNAs. The reacted RNA species can be isolated using an affinity handle such as biotin linked to the probe. (b) Electrophiles were assayed by LC/MS for their ability to react irreversibly with an RNA pool of random sequence. Electrophiles capable of forming products with random RNA sequences, as evaluated by mass spectrometry, were deemed too reactive, and variants with attenuated reactivity were identified. An excessively electrophilic candidate probe (top) and an attenuated version (bottom) are shown. (c) Eight electrophiles of tuned electrophilicity that can serve as probes to identify unusually reactive RNAs. R = biotin.