Substrate/inhibition studies of bacteriophage T7 RNA polymerase with the 5′-triphosphate derivative of a ring-expanded (‘fat’) nucleoside possessing potent antiviral and anticancer activities

Abstract

As part of an effort to explore the mechanism of potent, broad spectrum antiviral and anticancer activities of a number of ring-expanded (‘fat’) nucleosides that we recently reported, a representative ‘fat’ nucleoside 4,6-diamino-8-imino-8H-1-β-d-ribofuranosylimidazo[4,5-e][1,3]diazepine (1) was converted to its 5′-triphosphate derivative (2 ), and biochemically screened for possible inhibition of nucleic acid polymerase activity, employing synthetic DNA templates and the bacteriophage T7 RNA polymerase as a representative polymerase. Our results suggest that 2 is a moderate inhibitor of T7 RNA polymerase, and that the 5′-triphosphate moiety of 2 appears to be essential for inhibition as nucleoside 1 alone failed to inhibit the polymerase reaction.