A principally new generation of base antisense oligonucleotides was developed which are able to cause the death of certain selected micro-organisms and particularly also of mollicutes.
For this purpose oligonucleotides were developed which are complementary
(i) to ribosome promotor sites of DNA, and
(ii) to "signature" rRNA sequences.
These are the highly conserved sequence in mollicutes.
In addition, the same effect was obtained by blocking the function of "signature" rRNA sequences by oligodeoxynucletides complementary to these "signature" sequences. This is principally a new approach applicable to control growth of micro-organisms. In addition, these oligonucleotides interact with ribosomal operons on the genomic DNA (only one to two of these operons are present in mycoplasmas) and attach to double-stranded DNA, forming its three-stranded structure triplex at this site.
In the course of the project, furthermore, new superspecific antisense oligonucleotides have been developed.