Peptide nucleic acid

Peptide nucleic acid (PNA) is an artificially synthesized polymer similar to DNA or RNA.

[1] Synthetic peptide nucleic acid oligomers have been used in recent years in molecular biology procedures, diagnostic assays, and antisense therapies.

[2] Due to their higher binding strength, it is not necessary to design long PNA oligomers for use in these roles, which usually require oligonucleotide probes of 20–25 bases.

Several labs have reported sequence-specific polymerization of peptide nucleic acids from DNA or RNA templates.

[6][7][8] Liu and coworkers used these polymerization methods to evolve functional PNAs with the ability to fold into three-dimensional structures, similar to proteins, aptamers and ribozymes.

[9][non-primary source needed] It has been hypothesized that the earliest life on Earth may have used PNA as a genetic material due to its extreme robustness, simpler formation, and possible spontaneous polymerization at 100 °C[10] (while water at standard pressure boils at this temperature, water at high pressure—as in deep ocean—boils at higher temperatures).

The PNA molecular antagonist was administered to living cells and functionally inhibited the association of Xist with inactive X-chromosome using the approach for studying noncoding RNA function in living cells called peptide nucleic acid (PNA) interference mapping.

In the reported experiments, a single 19-bp antisense cell-permeating PNA targeted against a particular region of Xist RNA caused the disruption of the Xi.