The present invention provides improved methods for labeling nucleotides.
The method of the invention for labeling nucleotides comprises the steps
of: reacting a reactive moiety of a linker, which linker is a platinum
compound having a stabilizing bridge and two reactive moieties, with an
electron donating moiety of a spacer, which spacer comprises a chain
having at least four atoms and at least one heteroatom in the chain,
which spacer further comprises said electron donating moiety at one end
of the chain and a reactive moiety at the other end of the chain;
reacting the reactive moiety of said spacer with a label; reacting the
other reactive moiety of said linker with a nucleotide. A major advantage
of the invention is that all nucleotides can be labeled by the method of
the invention, whereas until now the attachment of a label was mostly
restricted to one or certain nucleotides.