Peptide Nucleic Acid Microarrays

A fast and economical procedure for the production of peptide nucleic acid (PNA) microarrays is presented. PNA oligomers are synthesized in a fully automatic manner in 96-well plates using standard Fmoc chemistry. Subsequently, the oligomers are released from the support and spotted onto glass or silicone slides, which were activated by succinimidyl ester. This process allows for a concomitant purification of the oligomers directly on the chip surface. Although the terminal primary amino groups of the full-length products bind selectively to this surface, none of the byproducts of synthesis, such as truncated sequences or cleaved side chain protection groups, will bind and are therefore washed away. In this chapter, protocols are presented for the whole production process as well as sample hybridization.