A photochemical detection of methylcytosine by using hydrophobic interaction.

In this paper, the nonenzymatic detection of 5-methylcytosine with high selectivity is described. We present a new methylation detection method by using template-directed photoligation through 5-cyanovinyl-2'-deoxyuridine ((C)U). Significantly, the photoligation yield of the 5-methylcytosine case was approximately 9.1-fold higher than that in the case of cytosine.