CN115873056A

CN115873056A - Method for synthesizing RNA nucleic acid using mixed deprotection agent

Info

Publication number: CN115873056A
Application number: CN202211347475.9A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 蔡晶晶; 王舒心; 苏敏; 杨凯森
Original assignee: Briggs Biotechnology Shanghai Co ltd
Current assignee: Briggs Biotechnology Shanghai Co ltd
Priority date: 2022-08-04
Filing date: 2022-08-04
Publication date: 2023-03-31
Also published as: CN115010770A; CN115010770B

Abstract

The invention provides a method for synthesizing RNA nucleic acid by using a mixed deprotection agent, which is a solid phase phosphoramidite triester method, wherein the RNA nucleic acid is synthesized by at least three sections, each section of synthesized RNA nucleic acid is 30-60 bases in length, the first section of RNA nucleic acid synthesis completes the synthesis of the first section of RNA nucleic acid according to four steps of deprotection, activated coupling, capping and oxidation of the solid phase phosphoramidite triester method, and the second section or more of RNA nucleic acid synthesis completes the synthesis of the second section or more of RNA nucleic acid according to five steps of deprotection, activated coupling, capping, oxidation and capping of the solid phase phosphoramidite triester method; the deprotection agent used in the deprotection step is a solution of dichloroacetic acid and trichloroacetic acid in dichloromethane. The mixed deprotection agent provided by the invention is adopted to realize stable synthesis of longer-chain RNA nucleic acid.

Description

Method for synthesizing RNA nucleic acid using mixed deprotection agent

Technical Field

The invention relates to the field of nucleic acid synthesis, in particular to a method for synthesizing RNA nucleic acid by using a mixed deprotection agent.

Background

Single-stranded nucleic acids are made up of a certain number of deoxynucleotides or combinations of nucleotides. Long-chain RNA nucleic acids are generally composed of more than 50 nucleotides (rA, rG, rC, rU). The long-chain RNA nucleic acid is widely applied to the fields of development of novel treatment strategies, crispr gene editing, FISH (fluorescence in situ hybridization technology), influence of RNA modification on RNA-protein complexes and the like.

The role of long-chain RNA nucleic acid in genome function research, drug discovery, biosynthesis and the like is becoming increasingly important. However, long-chain RNA nucleic acid synthesis always faces the challenges of complex sequence composition, secondary structure, difficult label modification and the like, and although some ingenious strategies have been developed to optimize these problems and improve the synthesis efficiency of long-chain RNA, long-chain RNA with a length of more than 50 bases cannot be stably and efficiently synthesized due to the steric hindrance effect of the sequence structure. Therefore, there is an urgent need to find a new method for synthesizing long-chain RNA nucleic acids.

In the current synthesis of nucleic acid by solid phase phosphoramidite triester method, when the synthesis chain is too long, segmented synthesis can be adopted, when 50 or more bases are synthesized, the number of monomer reaction passes can be increased properly, and the reaction time of reagent is prolonged properly so as to facilitate full reaction. This method enables synthesis of long-chain DNA nucleic acid when synthesizing long-chain DNA nucleic acid, but cannot be achieved when synthesizing long-chain RNA nucleic acid.

The main structure of DNA is similar to that of RNA nucleic acid, and the most significant difference is that RNA has a hydroxyl group 2' of glycosyl group, which is a reactive group, and the structural formula of the hydroxyl group is shown in the following formula 1. In the synthetic process, pre-protection is required to avoid side reaction at the 2 'end in the synthetic process, and a protective group (such as tert-butyldimethylsilyl (TBS), triisopropylsiloxymethyl (TOM) and the like) for protecting a 2' hydroxyl group can generate great steric hindrance, so that the coupling efficiency of the long-chain RNA is reduced. In contrast, the existing solid phase phosphoramidite triester method can synthesize DNA nucleic acid with the length of 160 bases at most, and can only synthesize the length of 50-55 bases at most when used for RNA nucleic acid synthesis, and the synthesis of RNA nucleic acid with the length of more than 50 bases gradually causes serious depurination and base deletion. And the purity of the crude product of the synthesized RNA nucleic acid is lower than 30 percent, so that qualified RNA nucleic acid products are difficult to obtain.

When synthesizing nucleic acid by the solid phase phosphoramidite triester method, the protecting group (dimethoxytrityl) on the 5-position of the phosphoramidite monomer needs to be removed, and then the next activation coupling reaction is carried out. The reaction reagent for removing the protecting group at the 5-position is generally called a deprotection reagent, and the main component of the deprotection reagent is alkylbenzene of protonic acid or a halogenated hydrocarbon mixed solution.

Wherein the reaction mechanism of the deprotection step is shown as a formula 2, protonic acid (TCA, DCA) can easily react with oxygen of 5' of the phosphoramidite monomer to remove DMT protecting group; it was found that the Base (Base 1) was completely exposed to the acidic reagent during this reaction, which is the most prominent reason for depurination in current nucleic acid synthesis. Depurination of nucleic acids refers to the process of breaking the chemical bonds between ribose and purine on a nucleic acid strand, thereby creating free purine and purine-free sites.

Due to the structural difference between RNA and DNA, RNA faces more challenges in the solid phase phosphoramidite synthesis process, such as complicated sequence composition, more secondary structures, lower reaction efficiency, severe nucleic acid depurination (depurination), etc., wherein the most concerned problem is the generation of nucleic acid depurination (depurination) during the synthesis process, which directly results in RNA nucleic acid synthesis failure because the deprotection reagent is protonic acid solution, and the nucleic acid is often exposed to strong acid solution to destroy the complete structure.

In order to minimize the problems of depurination and deprotection efficiency and low purity of crude products in the RNA nucleic acid synthesis process and realize the efficient reaction of phosphoramidite monomers in the synthesis process, the first step of deprotection to obtain effective 5' -OH is very important.

Disclosure of Invention

In order to solve the technical problems, the invention provides a method for synthesizing RNA nucleic acid by using a mixed deprotection agent, which is a solid phase phosphoramidite triester method, wherein the RNA nucleic acid is synthesized by at least three sections, each section of synthesized RNA nucleic acid is 30-60 bases in length, the first section of RNA nucleic acid synthesis completes the first section of RNA nucleic acid synthesis according to four steps of deprotection, activated coupling, capping and oxidation of the solid phase phosphoramidite triester method, and the second section or more of RNA nucleic acid synthesis completes the second section or more of RNA nucleic acid synthesis according to five steps of deprotection, activated coupling, capping, oxidation and capping of the solid phase phosphoramidite triester method; the deprotection agent used in the deprotection step is a dichloromethane solution of dichloroacetic acid and trichloroacetic acid, wherein the mass ratio of the dichloroacetic acid to the trichloroacetic acid is 13.

In one embodiment, the total mass concentration of the dichloromethane solution of dichloroacetic acid and trichloroacetic acid is 3g/100mL.

In one embodiment, the mass ratio of dichloroacetic acid to trichloroacetic acid is 4.

In one embodiment, the RNA nucleic acid is synthesized in three steps, a first RNA nucleic acid of 1-40 bases is synthesized; synthesizing a second RNA nucleic acid segment with 41-80 bases; a third RNA nucleic acid fragment of 81 or more bases was synthesized.

In one embodiment, the first RNA nucleic acid synthesis step is deprotection for 2 times, 12 to 15 seconds each, the second RNA nucleic acid synthesis step is deprotection for 3 times, 12 to 13 seconds each, and the third RNA nucleic acid synthesis step is deprotection for 3 times, 15 to 18 seconds each.

In one embodiment, the first RNA nucleic acid synthesis step is coupling 2 times, each for 120 seconds, capping 1 time, each for 60 seconds, and oxidizing 1 time, each for 60 seconds.

In one embodiment, the second RNA nucleic acid synthesis step is coupling 2 times, 150 seconds each, capping 1 times, 60 seconds each, oxidizing 1 times, 60 seconds each, and capping 1 times, 60 seconds each.

In one embodiment, the third step of RNA nucleic acid synthesis is coupling 3 times, 180 seconds each time, capping 1 time, 60 seconds each time, oxidizing 1 time, 60 seconds each time, and capping 1 time, 60 seconds each time.

In one embodiment, the coupling step is performed by using 0.50M-0.75M acetonitrile solution of ethylmercapto tetrazole as the activating coupling agent.

The invention provides a chemical preparation method of RNA nucleic acid capable of being synthesized to 120 base lengths at most based on a solid-phase phosphoramidite triester method, the purity of a synthesized long-chain RNA crude product is improved, and a pure long-chain RNA product can be obtained after purification.

By adopting the sectional synthesis method, the coupling efficiency can be effectively improved by using the activating coupling agent with higher concentration and reducing the total coupling time, the base deficiency in RNA nucleic acid synthesis is obviously improved, and the condition of few depurination is greatly improved; the addition of a part of capping reaction reduces side reaction at deprotection after the first stage synthesis, and improves the purity of crude RNA in RNA nucleic acid synthesis.

By adopting the mixed deprotection agent, the stable synthesis of longer-chain RNA nucleic acid is realized, the purity of the synthesized long-chain RNA crude product is further improved from the previous 100 bases to 120 bases, the deprotection time used by the invention is shortened, the time of the whole synthesis reaction is shortened, and the synthesis efficiency is improved.

The method avoids the problems of protein host residue and the like existing in the RNA nucleic acid synthesized by a biological transcription method, simultaneously minimizes the complexity of a nucleotide combination sequence, can be expanded to carry out labeling modification on the RNA nucleic acid, and can meet the requirement of large-scale production; and solves the problem of low purity of long-chain RNA nucleic acid.

Detailed Description

In order to make the technical solutions in the present application better understood by those skilled in the art, the present invention will be further described with reference to the following examples. It should be apparent that the described embodiments are only a few embodiments of the present application, and not all embodiments. All other embodiments, which can be derived by a person skilled in the art from the embodiments given herein without making any creative effort, shall fall within the protection scope of the present application. In the following examples, unless otherwise specified, all methods are conventional in the art.

Example A method of the invention for the solid phase phosphoramidite triester Synthesis of RNA nucleic acids

1. Principle of solid phase phosphoramidite triester method for synthesizing RNA nucleic acid

The specific synthesis steps of RNA synthesized by the solid phase phosphoramidite triester method in the prior art are divided into the following four steps:

the first step is deprotection, solid phase carrier CPG reacts with dichloroacetic acid/dichloromethane solution, and the protecting group Dimethoxytrityl (DMT) of the 5 '-hydroxyl is removed to obtain active 5' -hydroxyl;

the second step is activation coupling, RNA nucleic acid phosphoramidite monomer and activator tetrazole are mixed to obtain nucleoside phosphorous acid activation intermediate with high reaction activity (the 3' end is activated, the 5' -hydroxyl is still protected by DMT), and condensation reaction is carried out with the active 5' -hydroxyl obtained by the deprotection in the first step;

thirdly, cap reaction, wherein a small amount of 5' -hydroxyl possibly does not participate in the reaction in the condensation reaction, acetic anhydride and 1-methylimidazole are used for acetylation reaction and sealing, and the subsequent reaction is prevented from generating byproducts;

in the fourth step, the oxidation reaction, under the action of oxidant iodine, the phosphoryl form is converted into more stable phosphoric triester.

Through the above four steps, one nucleotide is attached to the nucleotide on the solid phase carrier. Then removing the protective group DMT on the 5' -hydroxyl of the new nucleotide by dichloroacetic acid/dichloromethane solution, and repeating the steps until all the nucleotides required to be synthesized are connected in turn.

And (3) cutting the RNA nucleic acid connected to the solid phase carrier CPG by ammonia water treatment, removing the protecting group, purifying the crude product by a High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) method, measuring the absorption value of OD260 to quantify the RNA nucleic acid, and subpackaging according to requirements.

The present invention synthesizes and purifies the long-chain RNA nucleic acid according to the following steps:

the first step is as follows: synthesis of long-chain RNA nucleic acid;

1. according to the method for synthesizing RNA nucleic acid by the solid phase phosphoramidite triester method, the synthesis condition parameters of an RNA nucleic acid synthesizer are adjusted from one to tens of degrees, and the long-chain RNA nucleic acid is synthesized by using the RNA nucleic acid synthesizer;

2. preparing a deprotection agent, an activation coupling agent, a capping agent and an oxidizing agent for synthesis, wherein the deprotection agent is a dichloromethane solution of 3% (w/v) dichloroacetic acid, and the using amount of each time is 200ul; the activating couplant is 0.25M acetonitrile solution of ethylene mercapto tetrazole, the dosage of each time is 75ul; the capping agent CAPA is 10% (v/v) acetic anhydride tetrahydrofuran solution, the usage amount is 80ul each time, the capping agent CAPB is 16% (v/v) 1-methylimidazole tetrahydrofuran solution, the usage amount is 80ul each time, and the capping agent CAPA and the capping agent CAPB are automatically added into the instrument by a machine at the same time; the oxidizing agent was a mixed solution of 0.05M iodine in tetrahydrofuran/pyridine/ultrapure water (v/v/v = 7/2/1) in an amount of 150ul per use. Dissolving 20gRNA monomer with 450ml of anhydrous acetonitrile, and using argon gas for protection, wherein the using amount is 63ul each time; all the above synthesis reagents were loaded onto an RNA nucleic acid synthesizer.

3. Weighing 10-16mg of a solid phase carrier CPG to manufacture a synthetic column; loaded onto the column base of the synthesizer.

4. Checking parameters such as equipment pressure, reagent bottle pressure, reagent dosage and the like, and clicking a 'start synthesis' button to start synthesis after confirming no errors.

5. And (3) checking the dosage of the reagent in the synthesis process, and operating the equipment until the synthesis is finished.

The second step: ammonolysis and desilication group protection

1. And after the synthesis is finished, carrying out ammonolysis deprotection by adopting a water bath, putting the CPG powder connected with the RNA nucleic acid after the synthesis is finished into 1ml of concentrated ammonia water (28%), heating to 45 ℃, reacting for 8 hours, and cooling to room temperature after the reaction is finished.

2. Filtering the turbid solution after ammonolysis to obtain a concentrated ammonia water solution dissolved with RNA nucleic acid, concentrating the concentrated ammonia water solution to a dry powder state, adding 1ml of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) to completely dissolve the RNA nucleic acid, continuously adding 1ml of triethylamine trihydrofluoride after dissolution, heating to 80 ℃, and reacting for 10 minutes. Obtaining the crude RNA nucleic acid with the 2' end removed silicon-based protecting group (TBS/TOM).

3. And (4) precipitating with wine. And (3) adding 10ml of absolute ethyl alcohol into the crude nucleic acid obtained in the step (2), placing the mixture in a refrigerator at the temperature of-20 ℃, and taking out the mixture after waiting for 2 hours. Centrifuging at 12000r/min to obtain white RNA nucleic acid solid.

The third step: purification of

Dissolving the white solid with nuclease-free water, loading the white solid on a high performance liquid chromatograph, and purifying by adopting acetonitrile and 0.2M triethylamine acetate (TEAA) aqueous solution. Adjusting the proportion of acetonitrile to be increased from 2 percent to 35 percent within 30min through a proportional valve, and reducing the proportion of 0.2M triethylamine acetate (TEAA) aqueous solution from 98 percent to 65 percent, and purifying to obtain the high-purity long-chain RNA nucleic acid.

EXAMPLE two solid phase phosphoramidite Triester Synthesis of Long-chain RNA nucleic acid experiment one

The solid phase phosphoramidite triester method synthesis mainly depends on synthesis parameters in an RNA nucleic acid synthesis instrument, wherein the reaction times and waiting time of each step have influence on the synthesis reaction efficiency along with the increase of the base length, so that the optimal synthesis reaction parameters are obtained through test verification.

The parameters shown in table 1 below are a set of conventional RNA nucleic acid synthesis parameter combinations, and synthesis of one base requires four steps of cycle deprotection, activation coupling, capping, and oxidation, where the reaction times in table one refer to the number of times of adding a corresponding reagent to a solid support, and the single reaction time refers to the reaction waiting time after adding each reagent.

TABLE 1

The synthesis test is carried out by using parameters for RNA nucleic acids with different base lengths, and the result shows that the parameters can only be synthesized to about 55 bases at most; the purity of the crude RNA nucleic acid of more than 55 bases is very poor and the product cannot be obtained by purification, and the specific results are shown in the following table 2.

TABLE 2

According to the data in Table 2, the purity of 65 bases of RNA nucleic acid synthesized by using the parameters of 20.1% is only, and qualified products cannot be obtained, and the analysis is probably caused by that when RNA nucleic acid with more than 55 bases is synthesized, the total time and the reagent dosage (namely the reaction times) of the activated coupling reaction are insufficient, so that the synthesis reaction is divided into two-stage synthesis, the number and the time of the activated coupling reaction after 50 bases are changed, the number of the activated coupling reaction is increased, the time of a single reaction is reduced, and the reaction time is increased as a whole. In the embodiment, three parameters are screened, wherein the number of the activation coupling times of the second parameter is 2 times when 1-50 bases are synthesized, and the single reaction time is 360 seconds; the number of the activated coupling times of the parameter three is 3, the single reaction time is 245s, the number of the activated coupling times of the parameter four is 3, the single reaction time is 255s, the number of the activated coupling times of the parameter two after 51 bases is 3, and the single reaction time is 245s; the activation coupling frequency of the parameter three is 3, the single reaction time is 255s, the activation coupling frequency of the parameter four is 3, and the single reaction time is 265s; the specific reaction parameters are given in table 3 below.

TABLE 3

The test verification is performed according to the three set parameters, and the verification data are shown in the following tables 4,5 and 6.

TABLE 4

TABLE 5

TABLE 6

Through test and verification of three groups of synthesis parameters, the result shows that the total activation coupling time and times are increased by two-section synthesis, the data of the second parameter shows that the purity of the RNA nucleic acid crude product with 55 basic groups is only improved by about 3 percent, and the purity of the crude product of the third and fourth parameters is poorer than that of the first parameter. Meanwhile, the purity of the crude products of 65 and 75 basic groups is less than 30 percent, and the purification requirements are not met. Through mass spectrometry, main impurity components are short-chain impurities with base deletion and purine removal, and more byproduct impurities can seriously affect the coupling efficiency, so that the purity of a crude product is low.

EXAMPLE three solid phase phosphoramidite Triester Synthesis of Long-chain RNA experiment two

According to the test data in the second example, it can be concluded that the efficiency of RNA nucleic acid synthesis cannot be improved simply by increasing the reaction time, and the results show that severe depurination and base deletion phenomena occur, which also causes very poor purity of the crude product. The explanation is that the steric hindrance problem of RNA nucleic acid cannot be solved only by simply increasing the reaction time, and in order to minimize the steric hindrance problem of RNA nucleic acid synthesis, the concentration of the activated coupling reagent in the activated coupling step is increased, and the coupling efficiency is improved as much as possible through the concentration effect. The screening concentrations are shown in table 7.

TABLE 7

The synthesis parameters of example two were used to screen the activator concentration, and the results are shown in table 8 below.

TABLE 8

Table 8 shows that the concentration of the activator screening results show that the concentration of the activator is increased, the synthesis efficiency of RNA nucleic acid with the same number of bases is improved, the ratio of lacking base in mass spectrometry is about 20-40%, the ratio of lacking purine is 1-4%, the concentration is increased to 0.5M, the phenomenon of lacking base in RNA nucleic acid synthesis is improved, the ratio of lacking base in mass spectrometry is about 14-25%, and the ratio of lacking purine is 4.3-5.1%. When the concentration is increased to 0.75M, the base deficiency is obviously improved, but a small part of depurination exists, the mass spectrometry analysis shows that the base deficiency accounts for about 9-14%, and the depurination accounts for 7-9%. The probable reason is that the activated coupling reagent is slightly acidic, and the acidity of the activated coupling reagent is increased after the concentration of the activated coupling reagent is increased, and the depurination condition is more serious as the activated coupling time is longer.

Therefore, considering the need of reducing the time of excessive exposure of the nucleic acid base to the acidic activated coupling reagent and considering that the longer the base is, the more difficult the coupling caused by steric hindrance is, the synthesis parameters are set to be three-stage synthesis, and the time of the second-stage and third-stage coupling procedures is properly increased along with the increase of the number of the bases. Table 9 shows the setting parameters of five, six and seven

TABLE 9

The optimal response time was screened by reducing the time of coupling and the results are shown in tables 10, 11, 12 below.

Watch 10

TABLE 11

TABLE 12

The results of the seven parameter test show that the segmented synthesis can effectively improve the coupling efficiency by reducing the total activated coupling time by using 0.75M activated coupling agent, and greatly improve the depurination and base deletion in the RNA nucleic acid synthesis, the seven parameter program is set to be activated and coupled twice by 1-40 bases, the activated and coupled time is 120s, the activated and coupled time is 2 times by 41-80 bases, the activated and coupled time is 150s,81 bases to the end, the activated and coupled time is 3 times, and the activated and coupled time is 180s, so that 85 bases are synthesized by using the seven parameter. The purity of the crude product is improved from 26.8% of parameter five to 33.2% of parameter seven, and qualified products can be obtained for RNA nucleic acid synthesis. However, when longer bases are synthesized by this procedure, partial base deletion still occurs, and the purity of the crude product is low. The test results are shown in table 13.

Watch 13

The results of the tests in Table 13 show that when the parameter seven is used and the concentration of the activated coupling agent is 0.75M, only 95 bases can be synthesized at most, and the purity of the crude RNA nucleic acid of 100 bases is lower than 30 percent, so that a qualified product cannot be obtained.

EXAMPLE four solid phase phosphoramidite Triester Synthesis of Long-chain RNA experiment three

The solid phase phosphoramidite triester method for RNA nucleic acid has higher water requirement for deprotection process compared with the solid phase phosphoramidite triester method for DNA nucleic acid synthesis, and the oxidizing agent is a reagent containing water in the oxidation step, although the reagent is washed by acetonitrile after oxidation, trace water remains, and in the next synthesis cycle, the water influences deprotection efficiency, thereby influencing the efficiency of the whole RNA nucleic acid reaction step and crude product purity. In order to further improve the purity of the crude RNA nucleic acid and the average reaction efficiency, the solid phase carrier is washed again by a capping reagent after the oxidation is finished, and residual water is removed. The principle is that water can be removed after reacting with an acetic anhydride/methylimidazole system in a capping reagent, so that the basic water content is greatly reduced, side reactions in a deprotection process are reduced in the next cycle, and the purity of a crude product of nucleic acid synthesis is improved. The instrument parameters were thus set as follows. See table 14 for parameters eight, nine, and ten.

TABLE 14

The results for parameter eight, parameter nine and parameter ten are detailed in tables 15, 16 and 17.

Watch 15

TABLE 16

TABLE 17

The test result of the parameter eight shows that the test result is worse than the test result of the parameter nine and the test result of the parameter tens, wherein the probable reason is that in the synthesis process of the first 40 bases, the solid phase carrier has higher permeability, the water is easier to wash, the base water is less, the permeability of the solid phase carrier is lower as the number of the bases is increased, the water is difficult to remove step by step, the synthesis efficiency is influenced, and a capping reagent water removal step is required. The test results of the nine parameters and the ten parameters are not very different, but the caps are added once for the first 40 bases of the nine parameters and the ten bases, so that the time and the reagents are wasted, the nine parameters are the optimal synthesis parameter setting, and the highest synthesis efficiency can be ensured.

Example pentasynthetic Long RNA nucleic acid different deprotection agent experiments

1. Synthesized using an RNA nucleic acid synthesizer, the procedure for RNA nucleic acid synthesis was set according to the synthesis parameters in the following table, and the procedure was maintained during synthesis, see in particular Table 18.

Watch 18

Wherein the required reagent dosage of each step of reaction is as follows: 1) The deprotection agent is dichloromethane mixed solution of dichloroacetic acid/trichloroacetic acid, and the dosage of each time is 200ul; 2) The activator is acetonitrile solution of 0.75M ethylene mercapto tetrazole, the usage amount is 75ul each time; 3) The capping agent CAPA is 10% (v/v) acetic anhydride tetrahydrofuran solution, and the usage amount is 80ul each time; 4) The capping agent CAPB is tetrahydrofuran solution of 16% (v/v) 1-methylimidazole, and the usage amount of each time is 80ul; 5) The oxidizing agent was a mixed solution of 0.05M iodine in tetrahydrofuran/pyridine/ultrapure water (v/v/v = 7/2/1) in an amount of 150ul per use. 20g of RNA nucleic acid monomer was dissolved in 450ml of anhydrous acetonitrile and protected with argon gas, and used in an amount of 63ul each time.

Deprotection agents, activating coupling agents, capping agents, oxidizing agents used for synthesis were formulated as follows, see table 19 for details.

Watch 19

In the solid phase phosphoramidite triester synthesis method, the first step reaction is to remove 5-end Dimethoxytrityl (DMT) protecting group, the most commonly used deprotection reagent at present is 3% (w/v) trichloroacetic acid in dichloromethane, and some researchers also use 3% (w/v) dichloroacetic acid in dichloromethane as the deprotection reagent, wherein the pKa of 3% (w/v) trichloroacetic acid in dichloromethane mixed solution =0.8, and the pKa of 3% (w/v) dichloroacetic acid in dichloromethane mixed solution =1.5, and from the pKa value, the acidity of trichloroacetic acid is stronger, and the acidity of dichloroacetic acid is relatively weaker. Therefore, in order to obtain the deprotection agent with moderate acidity, the two solutions are mixed to be used as the deprotection agent. Through the comparative test of three deprotection reagents, the invention can well improve the reaction synthesis efficiency and the reaction purity of the crude product, and the table 20 shows.

Watch 20

The test data in Table 20 show that 3% DCA as the deprotection reagent, which can synthesize RNA nucleic acid up to 100 bases but has low crude purity, and 3% TCA as the deprotection reagent, which fails in synthesis up to 45 bases, can significantly improve the crude purity of RNA nucleic acid by using 3% TCA/3% DCA mixed solution as the deprotection reagent.

Example hexasynthesis of experiments with different ratios of deprotecting agents for long RNA nucleic acids

It can be seen from the above examples that the crude product purity can be significantly improved by mixing the two, and the possible reason is that trichloroacetic acid as a strong acid in the RNA nucleic acid synthesis process gradually destroys the structure of the nucleic acid, dichloroacetic acid as a weak acid does not react sufficiently in the deprotection process, and after the two are mixed, the acidity of the mixed solution is relatively neutralized, thereby realizing relatively stable synthesis of long-chain RNA nucleic acid. By varying the relative mass concentrations of dichloroacetic acid and trichloroacetic acid, sequences of 100 bases in length (RNA-TD-5) were synthesized in parallel, and more appropriate mixing ratios (as shown in Table 21) were selected to further increase the crude purity of RNA nucleic acid synthesis. See table 21 for specific results.

TABLE 21

From the above results, it can be seen that 100-base RNA can be efficiently synthesized when the mass ratio of dichloroacetic acid to trichloroacetic acid is in the range of 13 to 2, wherein the crude purity is high when the mass ratio of dichloroacetic acid to trichloroacetic acid is in the range of 13; the crude purity decreased significantly beyond 1.

EXAMPLE seven different deprotection time tests

According to the verification results, the purity of the crude product can be improved by changing the concentrations of dichloroacetic acid and trichloroacetic acid, and the acidity of the mixed deprotection agent is stronger than that of 3% dichloroacetic acid after the concentration of the mixed deprotection agent is changed; to increase the production rate, it is therefore conceivable to down-regulate the time required for deprotection during the synthesis, thereby shortening the overall synthesis reaction time. In this example, the deprotection reaction times for different procedures were selected, and see tables 22 and 23.

TABLE 22

TABLE 23

The test results in table 23 show that the purity of the synthesized crude product decreases sharply when the deprotection time is scheme three; the crude purity of scheme one and scheme two is not much different from before, so scheme one with shorter time is selected as the optimal deprotection reaction parameter.

Example eight ultra-Long-chain RNA nucleic acid Synthesis experiments

The optimal deprotection reaction reagent formula and the deprotection scheme obtained by verification are applied to the synthesis of the ultra-long-chain RNA, and the sequence information of the synthetic primers is shown in the following table 24.

Watch 24

The synthesis procedure was synthesized as follows, with the parameters set as the procedure for RNA nucleic acid synthesis according to the following table, which remained unchanged during synthesis, see Table 25.

TABLE 25

Watch 26

Table 26 shows the results of synthesizing long-chain RNA nucleic acid, and it can be seen that the mixed deprotection reagent of the present invention can realize synthesis of long-chain RNA nucleic acid with 90-120 bases, the purity of crude product is greater than 30%, the purification requirement is met, the purity after purification can reach more than 90%, and the application requirement of the customer is met.

It is to be understood that the invention disclosed is not limited to the particular methodology, protocols, and materials described, as these may vary. It is also to be understood that the terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particular embodiments only, and is not intended to limit the scope of the present invention which will be limited only by the appended claims.

Those skilled in the art will also recognize, or be able to ascertain using no more than routine experimentation, many equivalents to the specific embodiments of the invention described herein. Such equivalents are intended to be encompassed by the following claims.

Claims

1. A deprotection agent for RNA nucleic acid synthesis, which is synthesized by a solid phase phosphoramidite triester method, and is characterized in that the deprotection agent used in the deprotection step is dichloromethane solution of dichloroacetic acid and trichloroacetic acid, wherein the mass ratio of the dichloroacetic acid to the trichloroacetic acid is 13.

2. Deprotection agent according to claim 1, characterized in that the total mass concentration of dichloroacetic acid and trichloroacetic acid in dichloromethane is 3g/100mL.

3. The deprotection agent according to claim 1, wherein the mass ratio of dichloroacetic acid to trichloroacetic acid is 4.

4. Use of the deprotecting agent of any one of claims 1 to 3 in the synthesis of an RNA nucleic acid, in which the RNA nucleic acid is synthesized in at least three stages, each stage of the RNA nucleic acid being 30 to 60 bases in length, the first stage of the RNA nucleic acid synthesis completing the synthesis of the first stage of the RNA nucleic acid according to the four steps of deprotection, activated coupling, capping, and oxidation of the solid phase phosphoramidite triester method, and the second or higher stage of the RNA nucleic acid synthesis completing the synthesis of the second or higher stage of the RNA nucleic acid according to the five steps of deprotection, activated coupling, capping, oxidation, and capping of the solid phase phosphoramidite triester method.

5. The use of claim 4, wherein the coupling step is carried out using 0.50M to 0.75M aqueous acetonitrile as the activating coupling agent.

6. The use of claim 4, wherein the RNA nucleic acid is synthesized in three steps, a first RNA nucleic acid of 1-40 bases; synthesizing a second RNA nucleic acid segment with 41-80 bases; a third RNA nucleic acid fragment of 81 or more bases was synthesized.

7. The use according to claim 6, wherein the first RNA nucleic acid synthesis step is deprotection for 2 times of 12-15 seconds, the second RNA nucleic acid synthesis step is deprotection for 3 times of 12-13 seconds, and the third RNA nucleic acid synthesis step is deprotection for 3 times of 15-18 seconds.

8. The use of claim 6, wherein the first RNA nucleic acid synthesis step is activated coupling 2 times for 120 seconds, capping 1 time for 60 seconds, and oxidizing 1 time for 60 seconds.

9. The use of claim 6, wherein the second RNA nucleic acid synthesis step is activated coupling 2 times each for 150 seconds, capping 1 time each for 60 seconds, oxidizing 1 time each for 60 seconds, and capping 1 time each for 60 seconds.

10. The use according to claim 6, wherein the third step of RNA nucleic acid synthesis is activated coupling 3 times, each time for 180 seconds, capping 1 time, each time for 60 seconds, oxidizing 1 time, each time for 60 seconds, and capping 1 time, each time for 60 seconds.