Design and application of bio-mimetic dyes in biotechnology

The last decade or so has been the introduction of multi-coloured reactive dyes as substitutes for natural biological ligands in the purification of proteins by affinity chromatography. This paper reviews the evidence for the remarkable selectivity of the interaction of reactive dyes with proteins and describes our recent work with dye analogues. Terminal ring, bridging ring and anthraquinone ring analogues of Cibacron Blue F3G-A were synthesised de novo and shown to interact selectively with the NAD+-binding site of horse liver alcohol dehydrogenase but with affinities differing by several orders of magnitude. It is anticipated that these novel dye ligands will lead to affinity adsorbents with improved affinity, capacity and specificity.