Our research on Peptide Nucleic Acids (abbreviated as PNAs) focuses on introducing chemical modifications that will make this class of molecules broadly useful to detect sequences of nucleic acids and also to create new type of nano materials for biomedical research. Unique nucleic acid sequences are associated with diseases, pathogens, and many agents associated with bioterrorism. Detection of nucleic acids from these agents can be employed as a method to detect their presence or absence, as well as to monitor progression of a specific disease. Our research involves the synthesis of a class of non-natural molecules (called PNAs) that bind to specific DNA or RNA sequences. We can design our molecules to bind to any sequence of DNA or RNA, and we have found that our molecules are extremely good at selective recognition of HIV RNA. We have continued to refine our assay using our PNA molecules to detect a small amount of HIV in plasma. We also extended a study exploring the potential of sidechain-modified PNAs as basic scaffolds for nanotechnology. Using a system of long DNA sequences, we developed conditions for the self-assembly of specific PNAs onto DNA strands as a way to create nanopatterns of specific biological ligands.
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