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Chapter 1
PNAs: From birth to adulthood
This chapter presents a general overview about Peptide Nucleic Acid synthesis, development
and applications. The section includes the various synthetic approaches to this class of
molecules, including standard and modified synthetic strategies. The insertion of many
interesting features within the backbone or into the nucleobases are described, together with
their influence on the hybridization properties, with particular focus on chiral PNAs, a class
of molecules characterized by the insertion of amino acid side chains as substituents in the
backbone. Finally, some of the most promising applications in medicine and analytical
biochemistry are reported, showing some results obtained in the recognition of nucleic acids
so far.
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