how Cy5 switches

December 7, 2009 at 9:10 am | | literature, single molecules

Xiaowei Zhuang and Roger Tsien have published a JACS paper on how Cy5 photoswitches: “Photoswitching Mechanism of Cyanine Dyes.”

cy5-mechanism

Nothing surprising here: this is the mechanism that Tsien proposed informally a couple years ago. But now they have published evidence that the thiol (e.g. BME, a component of the oxygen-scavenging system) attacks a polymethene bond.

I think this paper is a nice characterization of the photochemistry involved in Cy5 photoswitching.

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