Preparative isolation of tetra-, penta- und hexapurine oligonucleotides from partial hydrolysates of depyrimidinated herring sperm DNA

Herring sperm DNA is chemically degraded to a complex mixture of purine nucleotides. The oligonucleotides are separated from the partial hydrolysates by column chromatography. The resulting mixture of trimer to hexamer purine oligonucleotides is subsequently fractionated on QAE-Sephadex into different mixtures of sequence-isomeric purine oligonucleotides. In a final separation, which uses reversed-phase (Nucleosil C sub(18)) high-performance liquid chromatography, these mixtures are separated under isocratic conditions into 35 pure defined purine oligonucleotides with four to six monomer units, 14 defined mixtures of sequence-isomeric purine oligonucleotides and several unidentified products. Purity and sequence of the isolated oligonucleotides are determined by the "fingerprint" method. The results of the high-performance liquid chromatographic and the "fingerprint" methods of the isolated oligonucleotides are discussed.