Effect of buffer composition on PNA-RNA hybridization studied in the microfluidic microarray chip

Peptide nucleic acids (PNAs) are used as the probe species for detection of RNA. A microfluidic microarray (MMA) chip is used as a platform for detection of hybridizations between immobilized PNA probes and RNA targets. The RNA targets used are related to influenza A. This paper discusses the optimization of the two probe technologies used for RNA detection and investigates how the composition of the probe buffer or the content of the hybridization solution can influence the overall results. Our data shows that the PNA probe is a better choice over the DNA probe when there is low salt in the probe buffer composition. Furthermore, we have shown that the absence of salt (NaCl) in the hybridization buffer does not hinder the detection of RNAs. The results conclude that PNA probes are superior to DNA probes in term of sensitivity and adaptability, as PNA immobilization and PNA-RNA hybridization are less affected by salt content in the reaction buffers unlike DNA probes.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author