Light-directed synthesis of peptide nucleic acids (PNAs) chips

We report herein the light-directed synthesis of peptide nucleic acids (PNAs) microarray using PNA monomers protected by photolabile protecting groups and a maskless technique that uses a digital micromirror array system to form virtual masks. An ultraviolet image from the virtual mask was cast onto the active surface of a glass substrate, which was mounted in a flow cell reaction chamber connected to a peptide synthesizer. Light exposure was followed by automatic chemical coupling cycles and these steps were repeated with different virtual masks to grow the desired PNA probes in a selected pattern. In a preliminary experiment, an array of PNA probes with dimensions of 4.11 mm x 4.11 mm was generated on each slide. Each synthesis region in the final array measured 210 microm x 210 microm for a total of 256 sites. The center-to-center space was 260 microm. It was observed from the hybridization pattern of the fluorescently labeled oligonucleotide targets that the fluorescence intensities of the matched, and mismatched sequences showed substantial difference, demonstrating specificity in the identification of complementary sequences. This opens the way to exploit processes from the microelectronics industry for the fabrication of PNA microarrays with high densities.