Photochemical hydrophobic reagents

In recent years there has been considerable interest in the structure of biological membranes, and photochemical reagents capable of yielding low resolution structural information about membrane proteins have been developed. Several examples of photochemical surface-labeling reagents have appeared, and much effort has been devoted to the development of photoactivatable hydrophobic reagents for labeling from within the lipid bilayer. 

A simple hydrophobic reagent is a small radiolabeled organic molecule that can be photochemically activated after it has bound to a lipid bilayer. The major merit of such reagents in comparison to phospholipid analogs is that they are simple to use with native membranes. Klip and Gitler (1974)... 

Hydrophobic crosslinking reagents each with two photochemically ac-tivatable groups have been synthesized by Mikkelson and Wallach (1976). Their reagents (Fig. 5.1) were designed to bind to the lipid bilayer of... 

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