The stopped-flow technique for studying the PNA-DNA interaction

Stopped-flow technique is useful for studying fast reactions that have half-lives as short as a few milliseconds.1 This technique has never been used to study the interaction between PNA and DNA strands in the formation of hybrids. Peptide nucleic acids (PNA) are DNA analogues in which the sugar-phosphate backbone is replaced by a peptide amide bond backbone. PNAs show unique properties that set them apart from other traditional DNA analogues.2 Normally the affinity of PNA for DNA is detected by using melting temperature but sometimes this technique is not appropriate especially, if PNA contain some thermal sensitive functional groups. So, we have started an innovative study of PNA-DNA interaction by using stopped-flow technique for this we have synthesised the PNA sequences (Scheme 1).