TINA Technology

Twisted Intercalating Nucleic Acid (TINA) is an intercalator designed to stabilize Hoogsteen triplex DNA, but surprisingly, TINA can also under special conditions stabilize Watson-Crick antiparallel duplex DNA.
TINA has been shown to increase the melting temperature (Tm) and ΔTm of antiparallel duplex formations and Hoogsteen triplex formations in hybridizations assays.
The design rules for inclusion of the TNA molecule in any capture or detection probe have been established. Furthermore, TINA-DNA primers have been shown to be able to increase the annealing temperature (Ta) and delta Ta (ΔTa) of “classical” end-point PCR, and have been shown to decrease Ct in real-time PCR.
For hybridization as well as PCR, the effect of an increased Tm (Ta in PCR) and ΔTm (ΔTa in PCR) will be two-fold: An increase in Tm will by itself reduce the general probability of a hybridization probe (capture and/or detection) or a PCR primer to anneal unspecifically, and the increase in ΔTm will in a similar fashion reduce the probability of unspecific binding.
This increase in specific probe/primer annealing can be utilized to increase the overall specificity of a given assay.
Alternatively, by “relaxing” the stringency of the probe/primer annealing, an increased sensitivity can be achieved without compromising specificity compared to an identical assay without TINA-DNA.
Regarding the internal probe in real-time PCR reactions, an increase in Tm will by itself reduce the general probability of a PCR probe to anneal unspecifically, and the increase in Δ Tm will reduce the probability of unspecific binding.