molecule showed the highest increase of Tm. TINA molecules should be placed terminally for maximum increase in Tm. An increase in Tm increases the specificity of assays, like PCR. Anti-HIV-1 activity Recent studies show that the use of TINA insertions in G-quadruplexes has also been shown to enhance anti-HIV-1 activity. In such studies, two G quadruplexes forming sequences which exhibit anti-HIV-1 activity on cell lines were modified using locked nucleic acid (LNA) or insertions of TINA. Incorporation of this provides as much as 8-fold improvement of anti-HIV-1 activity and the introduction of 5’ phosphate was shown to inhibit the dimerization of G-quadruplex. Many antiviral quadruplexes forming oligonucleotides formed more thermally stable G-quadruplexes and also high-order G quadruplex structures, which may be responsible for antiviral activity observed. Therapeutic applications TFOs hold promise in anti-gene therapy, due to their high sequence specificity. However, the potassium levels in vivo promote TFOs to form G-quartet structures singularly, preventing the TFOS from interacting in a triplex formation and decreasing the effectiveness TFO cell therapies. However, as shown by Paramasivam et al., bulge insertions of (R)-1-O-[4-(1-pyrenylethynyl)phenylmethyl]glycerol (TINA) into TFOs with high guanine concentrations greatly decreases the presence of self-association via potassium. TINA-TFOs, then, may be used in the future to target the genome in vivo and perform genome manipulation toward a therapeutic end. The use of purine TINA-TFOs holds specific promise as antigene molecules toward the KRAS proto-oncogene. References Nucleic acids