Preparation and determination of optical purity of γ-lysine modified peptide nucleic acid analogues

Peptide nucleic acids (PNAs) are DNA analogues in which the nucleic acid backbone is replaced by a pseudopeptide backbone and nucleobases are attached to the backbone by methylene carbonyl linkers. γ-Carbon modification of the PNA structure allows monomers, and subsequently oligomers, with improved properties to be obtained. In this study, we report the convenient synthesis of γ-lysine-modified PNA monomers for pyrimidine bases (thymine and cytosine) with high optical purity (> 99.5%) and direct enantiomer separation of γ-lysine-modified PNA analogs, using chiral HPLC to determine the optical purity.