Metabolic Labeling Reagents for Proteins

Metabolic labeling refers to methods in which the endogenous synthesis and modification machinery of living cells is used to incorporate detection or affinity tags into biomolecules. Typically, this is accomplished by culturing cells or organisms in media in which a specific natural molecular building block (e.g., amino acids, nucleotides, or carbohydrates) has been replaced with a tagged chemical analog. Cells use the chemical analog instead of the natural biomolecule to synthesize or modify proteins, nucleic acids, and create an easily detectable reagent.

Featured metabolic labeling reagents

Azido Sugars for Metabolic Labeling and Detection

Azide-tagged sugars (GlcNAz, GalNAz, ManNAz) for studying glycoproteins using in vivo metabolic labeling and chemoselective ligation to phosphine reagents.

DyLight™ Fluor®-Phosphine Reagents

Phosphine-activated fluorescent dyes to label and detect azide-tagged molecules for metabolic labeling (Staudinger ligation) for fluorescence assays.

Phosphine-PEG3-Biotin

Phosphine-activated biotinylation reagent to label azide-tagged molecules for metabolic labeling (Staudinger ligation) and streptavidin detection.

Phosphine-PEG4-Desthiobiotin

Biotinylation reagent for soft-release elution from streptavidin, activated for chemoselective ligation to azide-tagged targets in metabolic labeling experiments.

Click chemistry is the detection method of choice for samples that would be compromised by direct labeling or antibody-based secondary detection techniques. The click label is small enough to penetrate complex samples easily, and the selectivity and stability of the click reaction provides high sensitivity and low background signal. This gentle sample treatment together with the biocompatible Click-iT Plus reaction means that detection can be multiplexed with expressed proteins such as GFP, protein labels such as R-PE, and a wide range of organic fluorophores.

Biomarker quantitation assay guide

This 72-page guide provides detailed information about different tools for protein and RNA quantitation. Download this valuable technical resource that covers technologies useful for cancer and inflammation research, immunology, neurology and more. Learn more about how antibody pairs, ELISA kits, and multiplex kits for the Invitrogen Luminex platform may help advance your research.