Functionalization of PNA - Novel strategy for active control of DNA recognition by external factors using peptide ribonucleic acids (PRNA)

Peptide nucleic acid (PNA), which has been proposed by Peter E. Nielsen in 1991, is one of the most typical and successful synthetic nucleic acid model compound, called an artificial nucleic acid, with extremely attractive and excellent properties, such as exactly sequence selective binding not only to complementary DNA but also to RNA, highly chemical and biological stability, forming very tight and stable complex with complementary DNA and RNA, and so on. Still, PNA also shows same inherent and crucial drawbacks, such as low solubility against aqueous solution, low cell membrane permeability, and uncertain direction of DNA/RNA sequence recognition. Thus, in order to improve these properties, a number of PNA derivatives have been proposed. In this review paper, we would like to give an overview of these strategies and properties of PNA derivatives and present our proposed novel strategy for active external reversible control of DNA/RNA recognition with peptide ribonucleic acid, PRNA.