Design of a molecular beacon PNA.

We have designed a novel dual-labeled PNA oligomer, having both a fluorescent dye and a quencher, by utilizing key compounds 1 and 2. We showed that the designed dual-labeled PNA oligomer works as a molecular beacon PNA. We also investigated the optimization of a stem-loop structure which can supersensitize the function as a molecular beacon PNA.

Application of peptide nucleic acid (PNA) for detection of transcription factors binding probes.

We designed novel PNA monomer units that could post-synthetically and quantitatively introduce photo-functionalized molecules into PNA oligomers. Designed photo-functionalized PNAs were applicable to wide fields such as genome based analysis. In this study, we applied a photo-functionalized PNA oligomers for the detection of transcription factors binding probes.

Development of novel whole-mount in situ hybridization (WISH).

We have designed a novel fluorescent PNA probe which can be rapidly introduced into the living cell without any complicated pretreatment. We could post-synthetically incorporate amino acid derivatives having membrane permeability function into the PNA probe by utilizing key compound 1 which we have already developed. We show that the PNA probe will be a candidate for a rapidly penetrating and non-degrading probe for WISH.