L-Azidohomoalanine (AHA) is a noncanonical amino acid analog of methionine that contains an azide moiety. AHA-labeling is a fast, sensitive, non-toxic, and non-radioactive alternative to the traditional technique for detecting nascent protein synthesis.
AHA is the cell-permeable compound randomly incorporated into synthesizing protein instead of methionine during translation. The resulting azide-labeled full-length proteins can be detected via copper-catalyzed click reaction (with fluorescent or biotin-labeled alkynes) or copper-free click reaction (with cycloalkynes) and used for subsequent microscopic imaging or purification tasks.
