Title: peptide nucleic acid
Long Title: IUPAC Gold Book - peptide nucleic acid
DOI: 10.1351/goldbook.09714
Status: current

Definition
Synthetic deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) mimic, which contains 2-aminoethylglycine linkages instead of the negatively charged phosphodiesteric backbone of oligonucleotides.

Note
The PNA probes are particularly convenient for the detection of single-base mismatches (point mutations, SNPs), because the stability of DNA-PNA duplexes is strongly influenced by a single-base mismatch.

Related Term
- mismatches: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/09699

Source
- PAC, 2018, 90, 1121. 'Terminology of bioanalytical methods (IUPAC Recommendations 2018)' on page 1150 (https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2016-1120)

Other Outputs
- html: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/09714/html
- json: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/09714/json
- xml: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/09714/xml

Citation: Citation: 'peptide nucleic acid' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.09714
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Accessed: 2026-04-18T03:49:37+00:00