Synthesis and Enzymatic Incorporation of a Responsive Ribonucleoside Probe That Enables Quantitative Detection of Metallo-Base Pairs.

Synthesis of a highly responsive fluorescent ribonucleoside analogue based on a 5-methoxybenzofuran uracil core, enzymatic incorporation of its triphosphate substrate into RNA transcripts, and its utility in the specific detection and estimation of Hg2+-ion-mediated metallo-base pair formation in DNA-RNA and RNA-RNA duplexes are described.