Important functions of Cy5 azide and the Cy5 dye

There has been a major and exponential growth in the field of chemistry in the last few decades and this growth has helped chemists worldwide to improve the quality, stability and at the same time to reduce the average time taken for various chemical reactions to occur. Many of these compounds are important for a field of chemistry discovered recently, that is click chemistry. Click chemistry is a term that was introduced in 2001 to describe reactions that are high yielding, wide in scope, create only by products that can be removed without chromatography, are stereospecific, simple to perform and can be conducted in easily removable or benign.

The use of cy5 dye

Cy5 dye is a bright far red fluorescent dye with excitation ideally suited for the 663nm or 647 nm laser lines. A significant advantage to using long wavelength dye like the cyanine dyes over other fluoro phores is the low auto fluorescence of biological specimen in this region of the spectrum. The cy5 is also the basis for the lipophilic neuronal and long term DID cell tracing reagents.

The use of cy5DBCO

The cy5 DBCO is a versatile labelling reagent for the detection of azide containing molecules or compounds. The cyclo otynes re useful in strain promoted copper free azide alkyne cycloaddition reactions.  This dibenzocyclooctyne will then react with azide functionalised compounds or biomolecules without the need for a Cu catalyst to result in a stable triazole linkage.  Thus it is perfectly suited for the reactions pertaining to click chemistry. DBCO alkyns can be used to perform click reactions with azide modified targets without the use of heavy metal catalysis. DBCO reactions are idal for surface labelling of live cells and also minimize damage to fluorescent proteins like GFP or RPE. It is efficient as the click reaction is completed in an hour. Iy is also a very specific reagent as the reaction between the label and the detection tag is selective. Its stability can be accounted by the fact that the reaction product contains an irreversible covalent bond. This compound is also biologically inert as the co
mponents of the reaction do not undergo any side reactions

The use of cy5 azide

Cyanine 5 azide is a labelling reagent for click reactions. It is available as 10mM0 solution in DMSO and in solid form. This azide is soluble in organic solvents so labelling reactions should be carried out with small amounts of organic co solvents. This azide can be used for the labelling of the alkyne modified biomolecules in mixtures of water with organic solvents. Solution in DMSO is ready form for the use in bioconjugation. Water soluble version of this reagent is also available. It is a dark blue powder or can be found as a dark blue solution too. Its molecular weight is 601.22 and it is soluble o=in organic solvents and it has low solubility in water.

Thus these are the functions of the above mentioned compounds.

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