Mass Spectrometric Analysis of Oligonucleotide and DNA Adducts

The assignment of the sites of modification by different carcinogens within a target sequence is a very important topic in cancer etiology and a critical part in the analysis of DNA adducts is to determine the site and frequency of modification on the DNA strands in order to better understand the relationship between the chemical behavior of different carcinogens and mutation hot spots. The initial focus was on the analysis of DNA adducts as "monomeric units", i.e., nucleosides or nucleotides. In order to correlate the adducts formation and gene sequence, it is necessary to have a fast and accurate methodology for structural characterization of oligonucleotide-carcinogen adducts from in vitro and in vivo sources using on-line separation coupled with MS or tandem MS. The aim of this book's research has been to develop HPLC-MS methodology for the analysis of DNA adducts in the form of oligonucleotides. To achieve this goal, a thorough literature review was conducted and a systematic approach with carefully designed experiments was carried out along with a discussion on presents the future prospects of the research.