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N-Cyanoimidazole (It's hard in water!)

By moleculeoftheday on February 22, 2008.

All of life links up biomolecules effortlessly, from the august readers of this blog, to the humble bacteria that colonize the half-eaten food on their desks. It makes it frustrating for scientists who are trying to synthesize them. We have methods, but they're inefficient. (It gets even worse for DNA.).

It gets even worse when you try and work on a biomolecule you already have in water. Most of our chemical tricks rely on us avoiding water like the plague - a lot of what we use will react with it. It doesn't help matters that a biological reaction might have 10 million times more water present than protein or DNA.

A few reagents exist that are in that happy medium of enough reactivity to do the job, but sufficient stability to hang around (at least for awhile) in water:

i-f9fb2b56e65b8c9c67556111dc9ffd3e-cyanoimidazole.png

Cyanoimidazole can be used to ligate bits of DNA - in water.

Tags
biology

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Great! Now what do we use to make our raisin bran stay crispy in milk? ;)

By speedwell (not verified) on 24 Feb 2008 #permalink

you pour your milk then eat REALLY REALLY FAST
;)