Optimization of synthetic route to PNA-T-OH monomers

Abstract

Peptide nucleic acids are synthetic molecules crafted to mimic natural nucleic acids,and thus, they are widely utilized in many chemical, and, biomedical applications. Although thereexist many approaches to synthesize monomers to date, there is still room to improve thesemethodologies. With this motivation, we compared some widely utilized synthetic routes toobtain N-Boc-PNA-T-OH, and N-Fmoc-PNA-T-OH. Our results indicate that N-Bocethylenediamineis the most pivotal intermediate in the chemistry of PNA, and synthetic routecommencing with this material affords these two PNA monomers in relatively high yield, andpurity, while being very reproducible.