ANTS

ANTS is a highly negatively charged dye with an amino group that can be coupled to an aldehyde or ketone group to form an unstable Schiff base. The Schiff base is usually chemically reduced by sodium borohydride (NaBH4) or sodium cyanoborohydride (NaB(CN)H3) to form a stable linkage. This labeling technique has been widely used for the labeling and subsequent sequencing of oligosaccharides and glycoproteins. The negative charges of the dye facilitate the electrophoretic separation of the degradation products of carbohydrate polymers. The polyanionic dye ANTS is used together with the fluorescent cationic quencher DPX for membrane fusion studies or permeability assays. The mixture of ANTS-DPX is minimally fluorescent initially, but becomes increasingly more fluorescent upon dilution (i.e., membrane fusion or leakage). ANTS also is used as a neuronal tracer. ANTS has a relatively high Stokes shift in water, which sufficiently separates its emission from the majority of the autofluorescence of biological samples. Spectral Data: λex 356 nm; λem 512 nm in 0.1 M phosphate pH 7.0.