Li-Jun Xie, Rui-Li Wang, Dong Wang, Li Liu and Liang Cheng*

We report a simple protocol that affords oxidative demethylation of N⁶-methyl groups in N6-methyl adenines (m⁶A). The biologically compatible photocatalyst riboflavin prompts a highly selective C–H abstraction from N⁶-methyl in adenines under the irradiation of a visible blue LED light, affording a novel and highly selective biomimetic demethylation of m⁶A and related N-methyl adenine analogues.

This work has been published in Chem. Commun., 2017, 53, 10734-10737.