The synthesis and study of modified nucleic acid backbones to probe the requirements of functional nucleic acid systems

Nucleic acids play a special role in chemical biology as the only biopolymer capable of encoding and transferring information. This property has placed them at the fundamental core of all living organisms, and made them a topic of intense research for well over a century. During this time, the structures and functions of nucleic acids have been elucidated in great detail. Not only has the storage and transfer of information in biological systems be described more fully, but the study of nucleic acids has identified, and produced, numerous other functions that could not have been imagined by those who first began to describe nucleic acids.;This work began as investigation into simpler nucleic acid systems capable of functioning as DNA and RNA do today by storing and transferring biological information. Our studies into simple nucleic acid backbones also provided insight into how we might rationally alter nucleic acid backbones into one that possess properties not observed in natural RNA and DNA.