Deoxynucleoside 5΄-triphosphate analogues in which the β,γ-bridging oxygen has been replaced with a CXY group are useful chemical probes to investigate DNA polymerase catalytic and base selection mechanisms. A limitation of such probes has been that conventional synthetic methods generate a mixture of diastereomers when the bridging carbon substitution is non-equivalent (X ≠ Y). We report here a gen-eral solution to this long-standing problem with four examples of individual β,γ-CXY dNTP diastereomers: (S)- and (R)-β,γ-CHCl dGTP (12a-1, 12a-2) and (S)- and (R)-β,γ-CHF dGTP (12b-1, 12b-2). Central to their preparation was conversion of the achiral parent bisphosphonic acids to P,C-dimorpholin-amide derivatives (7) of their (R)-mandelic acid monoesters (6), which provided access to the individual diastereomers 7a-1, 7a-2, 7b-1, and 7b-2 by preparative HPLC. Selective acidic hydrolysis of the P-N bond then afforded the"portal"diastereomers 10, which were readily coupled to morpholine-activated dGMP. Removal of the chiral auxiliary by H2 (Pd/C) afforded the four individual diastereomeric nucleotides (12), which were characterized by 31P, 1H and 19F NMR, and by MS. After treatment with Chelex®-100 to remove traces of paramagnetic ions, at pH ~10 the diastereomer pairs 12a and 12b exhibit discrete Pα and Pβ 31P resonances. The more up-field Pα and more downfield Pβ resonances (and also the more upfield 19F NMR resonance in 12b) are assigned to the (R) configuration at the Pβ-CHX-Pγ carbons, based on the absolute configurations of the individual diastereomers as determined by X-ray crystallographic structures of their ternary complexes with DNA-pol β.
