Abstract

Peptide nucleic acid (PNA) is nucleic acid analog which was formed by replacing sugar-phosphate backbone with a pseudopeptide chain constituted by N-(2-aminoethyl) glycine monomers. PNAs have attractive properties such as quiet stability against nucleases and proteases, resistance to salt concentration variations and pH changes, and they form strong complexes with complementary strands of DNA or RNA. Generally, The biochemical properties, strong and selective binding of PNA are interested topics to stimulated research on the hybridization process and its diagnostic and therapeutic applications in the past two decades. Because of this attractive nature, PNA is often used in molecular biology especially as antisense technology to inhibit gene expression and microbial cell growth with high specificity and detection of pathogenic bacteria with high sensitivity. According to these topics, in this review we described PNA's diagnostic and therapeutic applications in medical microbiology with relate researches and publications in each field as practical examples.