Synthetic probes, their applications and designing

Abstract

Microbial genomics is becoming an emerging field of science that analyses and compares complete genome of microorganisms or zillions of genes, in a concomitant fashion. Cost-effective and high-throughput next-generation sequencing (NGS) has made possible to explore highly diverse microbial community for metagenomics, medical diagnostics and clinical microbiological research. The probes, which act like biosensors, are commonly exploited for therapeutics, phylogenetic analysis and common medical diagnostic techniques. Synthetic nucleic acid analogues are replacing nucleic acids because of greater stability and efficiency in in vivo applications and molecular biology research. These artificial nucleic acid analogues like LNAs (locked nucleic acids) and PNAs (peptide nucleic acids) are being exploited in research and diagnostics, and continuous efforts are being made to engineer them further for their maximal potential. A number of tools are available for probe designing for various applications. This chapter focuses on the natural and artificial nucleic acid probes, the differences in the chemistry of these probes, their advantages, limitations and synthetic applications along with some web-based tools for probe designing and quality check.