Chemically Modified Peptide Nucleic Acids

我们对多肽核酸(PNAS)的研究主要集中在引入化学修饰，使这类分子在检测核酸序列方面具有广泛的应用前景，并激发出新型的小分子酶抑制剂。独特的核酸序列与疾病、病原体和许多与生物恐怖主义有关的因素有关。从这些病原体中检测核酸可以作为一种方法来检测它们的存在或不存在，以及监测特定疾病的进展。我们的研究涉及合成一类与特定DNA或RNA序列结合的非天然分子(称为PNA)。我们可以设计我们的分子与DNA或RNA的任何序列结合，我们发现我们的分子在选择性识别HIV RNA方面非常好。我们继续改进我们的检测方法，使用我们的PNA分子来检测血浆中的少量艾滋病毒。我们还扩展了一项研究，探索侧链修饰的PNAs作为设计和开发小分子酶抑制剂的平台的潜力。

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 inspire new types of small molecule inhibitors for enzymes. 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 a platform for the design and development of small molecule enzyme inhibitors.