Peptide nucleic acids on microarrays and other biosensors

The analysis of biomolecules using microarrays and other biosensors has a significant role in molecular biotechnology, and will become even more important in the future as a versatile tool for research and diagnostics. For many applications, the synthetic DNA mimic peptide nucleic acid (PNA) could be advantageous as a probe molecule, owing to its unique physicochemical and biochemical properties. PNA exhibits superior hybridization characteristics and improved chemical and enzymatic stability relative to nucleic acids. Furthermore, its different molecular structure enables new modes of detection, especially procedures that avoid the introduction of a label. In our opinion, all of these factors contribute significantly toward the establishment of faster and more reliable analytical processes and opens new fields of application.