Development of a method for regulating transcription by light sensitive hairpin-type peptide nucleic acid

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We synthesized a hairpin-type peptide nucleic acid-AZO(hairpin-type PNA-AZO) that tethers a Watson-Crick strand and a Hoogsteen strand with visible light-sensitive azobenzene linkers. We confirmed the azobenzene linkers enhanced the affinity to its complementary DNA sequence and afforded a 1;1 complex formation with its target DNA sequence. Visible light irradiation to the hairpin-type PNA-AZO altered its binding property to the target DNA and thetrans-isoform exhibited higher binding affinity compared to the cis-isoform. We further examined if hairpin-type-PNA-AZO can regulate transcription of plasmid encoding hemagglutinine(HA) protein of influenza A/H1N1 virus and green fluorescence protein(GFP) of Aequorea victoria in HeLa cell by fluorescence microscopy. As a result, the trans-form of hairpin-type PNA-AZO reduced the expression of HA-GFP protein in cells, while the cis-form didn’t interfer the expression. From these results, we can regulatetranscription of DNA in cells by controlling the configuration of azobenzene unit of hairpin-type PNA-AZO via visible light irradiation.