Genetic Chemistry: Towards Non-Enzymatic Ligation, Sequence-Selective Recognition of DNA, and Self-Assembling Systems for Gene Delivery

In the early eighties, two fruitful research areas emerged from the interplay between organic chemistry and DNA technology, namely, artificial nucleases and the molecular recognition of nucleic bases. More recently, the reverse reaction, i.e. DNA repair, as well as the recognition of double stranded DNA sequences has become another challenging goal accessible to chemists.