Effects of monomer and template concentration on the kinetics of nonenzymatic template-directed oligoguanylate synthesis

The synthesis of oligoguanylate on a polycytidylate template has been undertaken. The oligomerization starts with the dimerization of the first primer (k2) that is followed by the elongation of a preformed primer (ki) and ends with the hydrolysis of the monomer to form the deactivated material (kh). It has been observed that ki' does not depend on i when i is greater than or equal to 4 or less than or equal to 16. The rate constants k3' and ki' for oligoguanylate elongation agree with the template-directed model and enhances next-neighbor assistance.