An overview of Cy 5.5 dye and others

Cyanine is a compound belonging to the dye family of polymethine group. Cyanine has been used in the industry for many decades and it is still being used to manufacture high quality dyes. Biotechnology has advanced a lot in the past few decades which has revolutionized the use of cyanine in the industry. Cyanine has a lot of other utilities as well. For instance, it is used for the purpose of biomedical imaging as a fluorescent dye. Different structures of different types of cyanine provide different coverage of spectrums ranging from infrared to ultra violet. There is a big variety of cyanine compounds that is mentioned in the relevant literature. Originally cyanines were discovered and synthesized almost a whole century ago and were used for the purposes of increasing the range of sensitivity of photographic emulsions. In other words, they were used for increasing the wavelength range in order to create an image on a film. They are still used for the very same purpose along with a variety of other utilities in different fields including manufacturing of rewriteable DVDs and CDs. The CDs and DVDs made using this chemical composition are mostly unstable. So they are not recommended to be used for archival DVD and CD use. This is due to the fact that cyanine discs have a tendency to fade and become unusable in a few months or a couple of years at max.

Common types of Cy dyes

There are a lot of different types of dyes manufactured using cyanine as the parent chemical. The most commonly used ones are Cy 5 and Cy 3. They are usually used in combination for the detection of 2 colors. Cy 3 deploys in the greenish yellow region while Cy 5 fluoresces in red region.

Other commonly occurring cyanine dyes include Cy 3.5, Cy 5.5, Cy 7, Cy 7.5, etc. All these dyes have different utilities. Cy 3.5 is used for the replacement of Sulfo Rhodamine 101, Cy 5.5 is known to be near IR fluorescence emitting dye and Cy 7 is also a near IR and is invisible through the naked eye.

Alternatives of Cy dyes

Many different variants of standard cyanine dyes are designed and developed by different scientists. Diverse modifications are used to create effective dyes. The commonly occurring alternatives of Cy dyes include IRIS dyes, Seta dyes, Sulfo Cyanine dyes, Fluo Probes dyes, Dylight dyes, Alexa fluor dyes, etc.

Ozone susceptibility of Cy 5

In 2003, it was discovered by some analytical chemists that the microarrays using Cy 5 were suspected to come up with a decrease in the intermittent data quality that occurred by the environmental ozone. When Cy 5 was exposed to different levels of ozone above 5 to 10 ppb for a time span of almost 10 t0 30 seconds, the reproducibility of the microarrays of the substance was reported to be decreased sufficiently. Same experimentation was conducted on Cy 3 and a much higher ozone level was needed to cause the similar effects in Cy 3. This depicts that Cy 3 is more stable to ozone.

Cy 5.5 dye has a lot of other utilities as well. For instance, it is used for the purpose of biomedical imaging as a fluorescent dye at https://clickchemistrytools.com/product/?slug=cy5-5-dyes&showsubcat=97