Description
Custom LNA Oligonucleotides are ideal for studies involving short or very similar sequences. The high affinity of an LNA-enhanced oligonucleotide to its complementary sequence results in dramatically improved specificity and sensitivity, when compared with traditional DNA or RNA oligos. In many cases, LNA-enhanced oligonucleotides can be used to distinguish between sequences differing by only a single nucleotide, a feature that can be critical for the success of many experiments. Need a quote for your research project or would you like to discuss your project with our specialist team? Just contact us! For Custom LNA Oligonucleotide Large Scale and Custom LNA Oligonucleotide Manual Design, please contact us for ordering and for further information, or email our Support Team directly.
LNA oligonucleotides exhibit unprecedented thermal stability when hybridized to a complementary DNA or RNA strand. For each incorporated LNA monomer, the melting temperature (T m) of the duplex increases by 2–8°C (see figure Replace DNA with LNA for higher melting temperature). In addition, LNA oligonucleotides can be made shorter than traditional DNA or RNA oligonucleotides and still retain a high T m. This is important when the oligonucleotide is used to detect small or highly similar targets. Since LNA oligonucleotides typically consist of a mixture of LNA and DNA or RNA, it is possible to optimize the sensitivity and specificity by varying the LNA content of the oligonucleotide. Incorporation of LNA into oligonucleotides has been shown to improve sensitivity and specificity for many hybridization-based technologies including PCR, microarrays and in situ hybridization (ISH). T m normalization enables robust detection, regardless of GC content. The T m of a nucleotide duplex can be controlled by varying the LNA content. This feature can be used to normalize the T m across a population of short sequences with varying GC content. For AT-rich nucleotides, which give low melting temperatures, more LNA is incorporated into the LNA oligonucleotide to raise the T m of the duplex. This enables the design of LNA oligonucleotides with a narrow T m range, which is beneficial in many research applications such as microarrays, PCR and other applications in which sensitive and specific binding to many different targets must occur under the same conditions simultaneously. The power of T m normalization is demonstrated by the comparison of DNA and LNA probes for detection of miRNA targets with a range of CG content (see figure The power of T m normalization).
Use the guidelines below when designing your own Custom LNA Oligonucleotides: LNA will bind very tightly to other LNA residues. Avoid self-complementarity and cross-hybridization to other LNA-containing oligonucleotides Keep the GC content between 30–60% Avoid stretches of more than 4 LNA bases, except when very short (9–10 nucleotides) oligonucleotides are designed Avoid stretches of 3 or more Gs or Cs For novel applications, design guidelines may have to be established empirically Find more information about the LNA technology here and how to design LNA oligonucleotides here.
