Nucleic Acid Backbone Structure Variations: Peptide Nucleic Acids

Peter E Nielsen, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

Published online: March 2010

DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0003130.pub2

Synthetic analogues and mimics of the natural genetic material deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) are potential gene therapeutic (antisense or antigene) drugs. One of these mimics, peptide nucleic acids (PNAs), are chemically closer to peptides and proteins than to DNA, but nonetheless have retained many of the structural properties of DNA. These molecules have found applications as probes in genetic diagnostics and are also being developed into antisense (RNA (ribonucleic acid) interference) gene therapeutic drugs, targeting selected genes through sequence-specific recognition of (messenger or micro)RNA and in the future also antigene applications targeting the double-stranded DNA of the genes themselves leading to gene silencing or guiding specific gene repair. Finally, the special chemical and structural properties of PNA suggest that these or similar molecules might have played a role in the prebiotic origin of life (on Earth) and also could be interesting components of possible artificial life.

Key concepts:

  • A range of chemical structures can mimic various functions of our genetic material, the DNA.
  • Chemical modifications and structural mimics of DNA are useful as genetic diagnostic probes and are being developed into gene therapeutic drugs.
  • RNA interference drug sequences specifically bind to cellular (messenger or micro)RNA and interfere with (inhibit) their function.
  • Prebiotic origin of life could have involved peptide nucleic acid molecules as predessors of RNA.

Keywords: peptide nucleic acid (PNA); gene expression; antisense; genetic diagnostics; gene therapeutic drugs; origin of life

Figure 1. Chemical structures of peptide nucleic acid (PNA) in comparison with DNA and a natural peptide. The resemblance of PNA to both peptides and DNA is apparent. However, chemically, PNA is synthesized and ‘behaves’ like a peptide. ‘B’ signifies a nucleobase: adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) or thymine (T), and R is an amino acid side-chain.
Figure 2. Chemical structures of the natural nucleobases adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T), forming A–T and G–C Watson–Crick base pairs.
Figure 3. Binding modes of peptide nucleic acid (PNA) when targeting double-stranded DNA. At present, most studies have been concerned with the extremely stable triplex invasion complexes. The ladder represents a schematic DNA double helix and PNA oligomers are shown in bold. The triplex (a) and triplex invasion complexes (b) require a homopurine target and thus a homopyrimidine PNA. Because the double duplex complex (d) requires two sequence-complementary PNAs that would normally bind to each other, these PNAs have to be constructed with ‘pseudo-complementary’ bases (Lohse et al., 1999). The duplex invasion complex (c) can, in principle, form with any sequence PNA. It has, however, been shown to have appreciable stability only for homopurine PNA oligomers.
Figure 4. Schematic drawing of the principle of antisense inhibition of translation. Following the ‘central dogma’, the DNA of a gene is transcribed into a mRNA copy, which is subsequently translated into the functional gene product, a protein. The antisense reagent interferes with this process by binding to a short region (15–20 nucleotides) of the target mRNA, thereby causing degradation of the RNA (e.g. via ribonuclease H), or by physically blocking the ribosomal translation process.
Figure 5. Chemical structures of examples of DNA analogues and mimics of interest as gene therapeutic drugs and as probes in molecular biology and genetic diagnostics. PNA, peptide nucleic acid; PPNA, phosphono-PNA; 2¢-ODN (oligodeoxynucleiotide), 2¢-substituted DNA (the substituent may be methoxy); DNG, deoxynucleic guanidine; LNA, locked nucleic acid and HNA, hexose nucleic acid. ‘B’ signifies a nucleobase: adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) or thymine (T).
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 Further Reading
    Ivanova GD, Arzumanov A and Abes R (2008) Improved cell-penetrating peptide-PNA conjugates for splicing redirection in HeLa cells and exon skipping in mdx mouse muscle. Nucleic Acids Research 36: 6418–6428.
    Katada H and Komiyama M (2009) Artificial restriction DNA cutters as new tools for gene manipulation. ChemBioChem 10: 1279–1288.
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    Pouchain D, Diaz-Mochon JJ, Bialy L and Bradley M (2007) A 10 000 member PNA-encoded peptide library for profiling tyrosine kinases. ACS Chemical Biology 2: 810–818.
    Röglin L, Ahmadian MR and Seitz O (2007) DNA-controlled reversible switching of peptide conformation and bioactivity. Angewandte Chemie-International Edition 46: 2704–2707.
    Wojciechowski F and Hudson RH (2007) Nucleobase modifications in peptide nucleic acids. Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry 7: 667–679.

Related Sub-Topics:

Nucleic Acid Structure | Gene Therapy | RNA Structure and Function | DNA Structure and Function | Techniques and Tools in Molecular Biology
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Article Title: Nucleic Acid Backbone Structure Variations: Peptide Nucleic Acids
 
How to Cite close
Nielsen, Peter E(Mar 2010) Nucleic Acid Backbone Structure Variations: Peptide Nucleic Acids. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0003130.pub2]