A simple procedure for solid-phase synthesis of peptide nucleic acids with N-terminal cysteine.

Problems were encountered during attempts to prepare N-terminal cysteine-substituted peptide nucleic acids (PNAs) from commercially available, Fmoc-protected monomers. These problems have been surmounted by the use of an S-t-butylmercapto protecting group on the cysteine moiety. The solid-phase syntheses are carried out via a simplified procedure which should be generally useful for manual PNA synthesis.