Abstract
Peptide nucleic acid can recognise sequences in double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) through the formation of a double-duplex invasion complex. This double-duplex invasion is a promising method for the recognition of dsDNA in cellula because peptide nucleic acid (PNA) invasion does not require the prior denaturation of dsDNA. To increase its applicability, we developed PNAs modified with a nuclear localisation signal (NLS) peptide. In this study, the characteristics of NLS-modified PNAs were investigated for the future design of novel peptide-modified PNAs.
Highlights
The sequence-specific recognition of double-stranded DNA has been an important research subject owing to its wide range of potential applications [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
We successfully demonstrated that conjugation of an nuclear localisation signal (NLS) to pseudo-complementary PNAs (pcPNAs) results in enhanced invasion efficiency [37]
We checked the effectiveness of the NLS in decamer peptide nucleic acid (PNA) and employed two types of PNA: (1) unmodified PNAs (U-PNAs), i.e., a pair of decamer pcPNAs without an NLS and (2) C-PNAs, which are identical in sequence to U-PNAs but with an NLS at their C-termini
Summary
The sequence-specific recognition of double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) has been an important research subject owing to its wide range of potential applications [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. For this purpose, various methods have been developed, including those that make use of DNA-binding proteins [1,3,4,5,8,9,10,11,12], small molecules such as minor groove binders [13,14,15,16], and artificial DNA [17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24]. When pseudo-complementary PNAs (pcPNAs: see Figure S1)—where conventional adenine (A) and thymine (T) have been replaced by
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