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|Section2= |Section6= |Section7= }} Ethidium bromide is an intercalating agent commonly used as a fluorescent tag (nucleic acid stain) in molecular biology laboratories for techniques such as agarose gel electrophoresis. It is commonly abbreviated as "EtBr", which is also an abbreviation for bromoethane. When exposed to ultraviolet light, it will fluoresce with an orange colour, intensifying almost 20-fold after binding to DNA. Under the name homidium, it has been commonly used since the 1950s in veterinary medicine to treat trypanosomiasis in cattle, a disease caused by trypanosomes. The high incidence of antibiotic resistance makes this treatment impractical in some areas, where the related isometamidium chloride is used instead. Ethidium bromide may be a mutagen, a carcinogen, or a teratogen, although this depends on the organism exposed and the circumstances of exposure. ==Structure, chemistry, fluorescence== As with most fluorescent compounds, ethidium bromide is aromatic. Its core heterocyclic moiety is generically known as a phenanthridine, an isomer of which is the fluorescent dye acridine. Absorption maxima of EtBr in aqueous solution are at 210 nm and 285 nm, which correspond to ultraviolet light. As a result of this excitation, EtBr emits orange light with wavelength 605 nm.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.berthold-jp.com/pdf/ethidium_bromide.pdf )〕 The reason for ethidium bromide's intense fluorescence after binding with DNA is probably not due to rigid stabilization of the phenyl moiety, because the phenyl ring has been shown to project outside the intercalated bases. In fact, the phenyl group is found to be almost perpendicular to the plane of the ring system, as it rotates about its single bond to find a position where it will impinge upon the ring system minimally. Instead, the hydrophobic environment found between the base pairs is believed to be responsible. By moving into this hydrophobic environment and away from the solvent, the ethidium cation is forced to shed any water molecules that were associated with it. As water is a highly efficient fluorescent quencher, the removal of these water molecules allows the ethidium to fluoresce. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「ethidium bromide」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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