Application of peptide nucleic acid towards development of nanobiosensor arrays.

Peptide nucleic acid (PNA) is the modified DNA or DNA analogue with a neutral peptide backbone instead of a negatively charged sugar phosphate. PNA exhibits chemical stability, resistant to enzymatic degradation inside living cell, recognizing specific sequences of nucleic acid, formation of stable hybrid complexes like PNA/DNA/PNA triplex, strand invasion, extraordinary thermal stability and ionic strength, and unique hybridization relative to nucleic acids. These unique physicobiochemical properties of PNA enable a new mode of detection, which is a faster and more reliable analytical process and finds applications in the molecular diagnostics and pharmaceutical fields. Besides, a variety of unique characteristic features, PNAs replace DNA as a probe for biomolecular tool in the molecular genetic diagnostics, cytogenetics, and various pharmaceutical potentials as well as for the development of sensors/arrays/chips and many more investigation purposes. This review paper discusses the various current aspects related with PNAs, making a new hot device in the commercial applications like nanobiosensor arrays. 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.