Synthesis and DNA binding properties of terminally modified peptide nucleic acids

PNAs with terminal modifications of varying structure and charge were synthesized and their binding to DNA was studied. A variation in thermal stability of 19. 8 °C has been observed between the least and the most stable PNA–DNA duplexes. The most stable duplex melts 7.7 °C higher than the duplex of the corresponding non-modified PNA and complementary DNA. It has been shown that sequence fidelity of the PNA conjugate having the highest DNA affinity is significantly better than that of non-modified PNA. The results obtained can be used for the design of PNA probes, whose binding to DNA is sequence independent.