Facile Evaluation of Photolytic Efficiency of Light-Sensitive Protecting Compounds

Light-sensitive protecting chemical groups play an important role in the control of chemical reactions with high spatial and temporal resolution. Various forms of o-nitrobenzyl as a protecting compound are used for light-directed DNA synthesis. The suitability of a particular derivative for the application is defined by its photolytic efficiency, a characteristic, that is commonly extracted from a repetitive HPLC procedure. Here, using an example of a phosphoramidite compound with improved properties of deprotection, we delineate a simplified and economic approach based on a measurement of absorbance spectra to evaluate the photolytic efficiency. The obtained values are in close agreement with those determined previously.