Marvin Harry Caruthers

Research has focused primarily in areas related to nucleic acic chemistry and biochemistry. The chemistry, which is commonly referred to as the phosphoramidite method for synthesizing oligonucleotides, involves adding activated mononucleotides to a growing DNA segment that is linked to an insoluble solid support. At the conclusion of the synthesis, the DNA segment is chemically freed of blocking groups, hydrolyzed from the support, and purified to homogeneity. DNA synthesized using this chemistry is used for isolated unique genes from various organisms (chromosome mapping and PCR), sequencing DNA, preparing complex expression vectors, biophysical studies, and many other applications. More recently my laboratory, as well as others, has applied this appraoch to the synthesis of RNA and a large number of analogs useful for various biochemical applications.