DNA and RNA are naturally endowed with structural features for self-assembly through complementary base pairing, leading to a variety of structures ranging from hairpins, duplexes, triplexes to cruciform and tetraplexes etc. Several chemically modified analogues involving modification of sugar-phosphate backbone have been developed in context of antisense therapeutics. All these analogues can bind to complementary sequences via hydrogen bonding frombases, from one side of the backbone. Varieties of topological structures or objects (DNA nanotechnology and DNA origami) are created by engineering sequences to assume different shapes.<br/><br/>We have embarked on new types of DNA analogues derived from Peptide Nucleic Acids (PNA). We present a new class of PNA analogues, that are endowed for structural accommodation of nucleobases for recognition of complementary nucleic acid strands from either of its faces. Such designed PNAs, have the potential to form programmable self-assemblies with complementary DNA, RNA, PNA and other DNA analogues. This presentation demonstrates our initial studies on the synthesis and complementation studies of such PNA analogues, biophysical characterization of duplexes generated from them and their supramolecular nano architectures.

Janus PNAs: PNA Analogues for simultaneous recognition of two complementary DNA/RNA strands for programmable supramolecular assemblies

2019 Spring National Meeting

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