Double-headed nucleic acids condense the molecular information of DNA to half the number of nucleotides.

Nucleotide monomers that hold two nucleobases each, i.e. double-headed nucleotides, have been shown to form two sets of functional Watson-Crick base pairs when incorporated into dsDNA, and they hereby behave as dinucleotides. To form the basis for fully modified double-headed nucleic acids (DhNA), we have prepared three new DhNA monomers and can now demonstrate that the molecular information of 10 Watson-Crick base pairs can be condensed to highly stable 5-mer DhNA duplexes.