Nuclease stability of boron-modified nucleic acids: application to label-free mismatch detection.

5'-End boronic acid-modified oligonucleotides were evaluated against various nucleases at single and double stranded levels. The results show that these modifications induce a high resistance to degradation by calf-spleen and snake venom phosphodiesterases. More importantly, this eventually led to the development of a new label-free enzyme-assisted fluorescence-based method for single mismatch detection.