How is epicocconone different from other fluorescent labelers?
The major feature is that the molecule is not fluorescent until it conjugates with the protein. That appears to be a unique feature of it. For example, GFP itself is a fluorescent protein. It’s a big, big molecule. Our molecule is a really tiny molecule that’s produced by the polyketide pathway. It’s small, it’s water soluble, and it’s neutral. It’s got a lot of nice features as a fluorescent molecule. It’s not at all like GFP. GFP is more like you’re using it more as a reporter of gene function. Our molecule is really specifically to detect, track, and to quantify proteins, because that reaction is quantifiable by fluorescence output. The other key feature is the reversibility of the staining. That’s really important for proteomics, because you don’t just want to quantify the protein and detect the protein. You want to do other things with the protein like mass spec in order to identify it, or Edmund sequencing, or antibody staining. One of the nice things about epicocconone is it can
