Nucleotides

RNA methylation signals a plethora of cellular functions including biochemical and metabolic stabilization of RNA, immune response, resistance to antibiotics, mRNA reading frame maintenance, splicing and more. Methylation of the 5 position of cytidine is a common, post-transcriptional modification in a number of RNA species, such as mRNA, miRNA and tRNA. 5-Methylcytidine-5'-Triphosphate (5-Methyl-CTP) is a modified nucleoside triphosphate employed to impart desirable characteristics such as increased nuclease stability, increased translation or reduced interaction of innate immune receptors with in vitro transcribed RNA. 5-Methyl-CTP, as well as Pseudo-UTP and 2-Thio-UTP, have been shown to reduce innate immune stimulation in culture and in vivo while enhancing translation in recent publications by Kormann et al. and Warren et al. Kormann et al. demonstrated the improvement of therapeutic mRNA in vivo delivery by chemical modification. Chemical modifications explored included Pseudo-U,