Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chemical synthesis of modified RNA / Claudia Hobartner and Falk Wachowius -- Expansion of the genetic alphabet in nucleic acids by creating new base pairs / Ichiro Hirao and Michiko Kimoto -- Chemical biology of DNA replication : probing DNA polymerase selectivity mechanisms with modified nucleotides / Andreas Marx -- Nucleic-acid-templated chemistry / Michael Oberhuber -- Chemical biology of peptide nucleic acids (PNA) / Peter E. Nielsen -- The interactions of small molecules with DNA and RNA / Yun Xie, Victor Tam and Yitzhak Tor -- The architectural modules of folded RNAs / V. Fritsch and Eric Westhof -- Genesis and biological applications of locked nucleic acid (LNA) / Harleen Kaur and Souvik Maiti -- Small non-coding RNA in bacteria / Sabine Brantl -- Microrna-guided gene silencing / Gunter Meister -- Nucleic acids based therapies / Britta Hoehn and John J. Rossi -- Innate immune recognition of nucleic acid / Stefan Bauer -- Light-responsive nucleic acids for the spatiotemporal control of biological processes / Alexander Heckel and G�unter Mayer -- DNA methylation / Albert Jeltsch and Renata Z. Jurkowska -- Frameworks for programming RNA devices / Maung Nyan Win, Joe C. Liang and Christina D. Smolke -- RNA as a catalyst : the Diels-Alderase-ribozyme / Andres J�aschke -- Evolving an understanding of RNA function by in vitro approaches / Qing Wang and Peter J. Unrau -- The chemical biology of aptamers : synthesis and applications / G�unter Mayer & Bernhard Wulffen -- Nucleic acids as detection tools / Jeffrey C.F. Lam, Sergio Aguirre and Yingfu Li -- Bacterial riboswitch discovery and analysis / Tyler D. Ames and Ronald R. Breaker.