1388-2481/$ see front matter 2008 Elsevier B.V. A doi:10.1016/j.elecom.2008.11.049 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +420 541517177; fax E-mail address: [email protected] (E. Paleček). Peptide nucleic acid (PNA), the DNA mimic with electrically neutral pseudopeptide backbone, is intensively used in biotechnologies and particularly in single-base mismatch detection in DNA hybridization sensors. We prop...

Polymerization of electronically, essentially neutral peptide nucleic acids (PNA) into polyacrylamide gels creates a medium in which the salt-independent properties of PNA/DNA interactions are used to achieve hybridization with target DNA during affinity electrophoresis. Such physical entrapment of PNA has been used to differentiate between a retarded, complementary DNA strand and a non-retarde...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility and efficacy of antisense-mediated gene silencing by peptide nucleic acid (PNA) for specific inactivation of the CmeABC multidrug efflux transporter in Campylobacter jejuni. METHODS PNA was designed to bind to the cmeA transcript and to inhibit the translation of CmeA, the periplasmic component of the RND-type CmeABC efflux t...

We present the results of molecular dynamics simulations of small peptide nucleic acid (PNA) molecules, synthetic analogs of DNA, at a lipid bilayer in water. At neutral pH, without any salt, and in the NP(n)gammaT ensemble, two similar PNA molecules (6-mers) with the same nucleic base sequence and different terminal groups are investigated at the interface between water and a 1-palmitoyl-2-ole...

Second-harmonic generation microscopy (SHGM) has been employed to study crystals of zeolite-like material SAPO-5 filled with p-nitroaniline (PNA). The SHG and 2-photon fluorescence response of PNA in the one-dimensional channels readily reveals the pore accessibility; intergrown crystallites containing hexagonal pyramidal components and internal diffusion barriers are found next to seemingly pe...

Peptide nucleic acid (PNA) is a DNA mimic consisting of the four common bases of DNA on a pseudopeptide backbone that makes it extremely stable in biological fluids. Antisense PNA is targeted against mRNA in cytoplasm in a sequence specific manner. However, the main hindrance to the effective use of PNAs has been their relatively poor uptake by cells. Endosomal release or direct uptake into cyt...

The SNAP protein is a widely used self-labeling tag that can be used for tracking protein localization and trafficking in living systems. A model system providing controlled alignment of SNAP-tag units can provide a new way to study clustering of fusion proteins. In this work, fluorescent SNAP-PNA conjugates were controllably assembled on DNA frameworks, forming dimers, trimers, and tetramers. ...

Prenatal androgenization (PNA) of female mice with dihydrotestosterone programs reproductive dysfunction in adulthood, characterized by elevated luteinizing hormone levels, irregular estrous cycles, and central abnormalities. Here, we evaluated activity of GnRH neurons from PNA mice and the effects of in vivo treatment with metformin, an activator of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) that is ...

This investigation performs diagnostic analyses on NCEP/NCAR re-analysis data, and also does forced, nonlinear, barotropic model calculations to examine the dynamical mechanisms associated with the growth and decay of the PaciŽ c/North American teleconnection pattern (PNA). The diagnostic calculations include projection and composite analyses of each term in the stream-function-tendency equatio...

The remarkable stability of peptide nucleic acids (PNAs) towards enzymatic degradation makes this class of molecules ideal to develop as part of a diagnostic device. Here we report the development of chemically engineered PNAs for the quantitative detection of HIV RNA at clinically relevant levels that are competitive with current PCR-based assays. Using a sandwich hybridization approach, chemi...