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Updated: Jun 26, 2025

Bioorthogonal Chemical Imaging of Cell Metabolism Regulated by Aromatic Amino Acids
Published on: May 12, 2023
Unnatural Amino Acids for Biological Spectroscopy and Microscopy
Ran-Ran Feng1, Manxi Wang1, Wenkai Zhang2
1Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
None:
Due to advances in methods for site-specific incorporation of unnatural amino acids (UAAs) into proteins, a large number of UAAs with tailored chemical and/or physical properties have been developed and used in a wide array of biological applications. In particular, UAAs with specific spectroscopic characteristics can be used as external reporters to produce additional signals, hence increasing the information content obtainable in protein spectroscopic and/or imaging measurements. In this Review, we summarize the progress in the past two decades in the development of such UAAs and their applications in biological spectroscopy and microscopy, with a focus on UAAs that can be used as site-specific vibrational, fluorescence, electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), or nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) probes. Wherever applicable, we also discuss future directions.
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