Beyond Triphosphates: Reagents and Methods for Chemical Oligophosphorylation

Oligophosphates play essential roles in biochemistry, and considerable research has been directed toward the synthesis of both naturally occurring oligophosphates and their synthetic analogues. Greater attention has been given to mono-, di-, and triphosphates, as these are present in higher concentrations biologically and easier to synthesize. However, extended oligophosphates have potent biochemical roles, ranging from blood coagulation to HIV drug resistance. Sporadic reports have slowly built a niche body of literature related to the synthesis and study of extended oligophosphates, but newfound interests and developments have the potential to rapidly expand this field. Here we report on current methods to synthesize oligophosphates longer than triphosphates and comment on the most important future directions for this area of research. The state of the art has provided fairly robust methods for synthesizing nucleoside 5′-tetra- and pentaphosphates as well as dinucleoside 5′,5′-oligophosphates. Future research should endeavor to push such syntheses to longer oligophosphates while developing synthetic methodologies for rarer morphologies such as 3′-nucleoside oligophosphates, polyphosphates, and phosphonate/thiophosphate analogues of these species.