Polyamide amino acids: a new class of RNA ligands

Abstract

This communication introduces a new class of promising RNA ligands, named polyamide amino acids (PAA), which are able to bind a targeted bulged stem-loop RNA fragment (HIV-1 TAR RNA) with micromolar affinities and with specificity comparative to dsDNA and tRNA; both the affinity and the specificity of PAA for TAR depend on their length and on the nature of the amino acid residues.