Peptide Nucleic Acid

About PNA

PNA (Peptide Nucleic Acid) is an artificially synthesized polymer similar to DNA or RNA. The various purine and pyrimidine bases are linked to the backbone by methylene carbonyl bonds as in peptides. Since PNA contains no charged phosphate groups, the binding between PNA and DNA is stronger than that between DNA and DNA due to the lack of electrostatic repulsion. PNA is resistant to DNases and proteases, and is extremely stable in vivo as well as in vitro.

PNA Application

1. Fabani MM et al. 2008. miR-122 targeting with LNA/2'-O-methyl oligonucleotide mixmers, peptide nucleic acids (PNA), and PNA-peptide conjugates. RNA 14(2), 336-346.
2. Mack GS. 2007. MicroRNA gets down to business. Nat Biotechnol. 25(6), 631-8. Review.
3. Dalmay T. 2008. MicroRNAs and cancer. J Intern Med. 263(4), 366-75.
4. Hammond SM et al. 2006. MicroRNAs as oncogenes. Curr Opin Genet Dev. 16(1), 4-9. Review.

FISH probes

1. Kentaro Taemura et al. 2005. Dynamic rearrangement of telomeres during spermatogenesis in mice. Developmental Biology 281, 196-207.
2. Won-Woo Lee et al. 2002. Age-related telomere length dynamics in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of healthy cynomolgus monkeys measured by Flow FISH. Immunology 105, 458-465.
3. Heather Perry. et al. 2001. Identification of indicator microorganisms using a standardized PNA FISH method. Journal of Microbiological Methods 47, 281-292.
4. Caifu Chen et al. 1999. Single base discrimination of CENP-B repeats on mouse and human chromosomes with PNA-FISH. Mammalian Genome 10, 13-18.
5. M. Hultdin et al. 1998. Telomere analysis by flourescence in situ hybridization and flow cytometry. Nucleic Acids Research 26(16), 3651-3656.
6. Peter M. Landsdorp et al. 1996. Heterogeneity in telomere length of human chromosomes. Human Molecular Genetics 5(5), 685-691.

Bio-drugs for antigene and antisense therapy

The strong binding and stability of PNA imply that a small quantity of PNA can be effective for therapeutic applications. Triplex invasion of a PNA shows good potential as antigene material in vivo as well as in vitro.

1. Jens Kurreck, 2003. Antisense technologies; Improvement through novel chemical modifications. Eur. J. Biochem. 270, 1628-1644.
2. Uffe Koppelhus et al. Cellular delivery of peptide nucleic acid (PNA). Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews 55, 267-280.

PNA probe for microarray

1. Liu ZC. et al. 2007. Light-directed synthesis of peptide nucleic acids (PNAs) chips. Biosensors and Bioelectronics 22, 2891-2897.
2. Raymond FR et al. 2005. Detection of target DNA using fluorescent cationic polymer and peptide nucleic acid probes on solid support. BMC Biotechnol. 5:10.
3. Brandt O. et al. 2003. PNA microarrays for hybridization of unlabelled DNA samples. Nucleic Acids Res. 31(19), e119.
4. Liu CG et al. 2004. An oligonucleotide microchip for genome-wide microRNA profiling in human and mouse tissues. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 101(26), 9740-9744.

PNA probe for nucleic acid biosensor

1. Wang J. et al. 1998. DNA biosensors based on Peptide Nucleic Acid (PNA) recognition layers.A review. Biosensors & Bioelectronics 13, 757-762.
2. Ray A et al. 2000. Peptide nucleic acid (PNA): its medical and biotechnical applications and promise for the future. The FASEB Journal 14, 1041-1060.
3. Demidov V. et al. 2003. PNA and LNA throw light on DNA. Trends in Biotechnology 21(1), 4-7.

Northern and southern blot

1. Nielsen PE et al. 1999. An introduction to peptide nucleic acid. Curr Issues Mol Biol. 1, 89-104.
2. Perry-O'Keefe et al. 1996. Peptide nucleic acid pre-gel hybridization: an alternative to Southern hybridization. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 93, 14670-14675.
3. Adriana Tovar-Salazar et al. 2007. Preparation of radioiodinated peptide nucleic acids with high specific activity. Analytical Biochemistry 360, 92-98.