This compound has been shown to be a useful reagent for the conversion of cysteine to dehydroalanine (DHA) in peptides or proteins. This enables chemical mutagenesis in which DHA can be efficiently reacted with iodide building blocks to add various natural and unnatural side chains on proteins. It was also shown that other modifications could be added through DHA such as phosphorylation, methylation, and glycosylation. In other research it was shown that DHA can be used to make ubiquitin conjugates that have a bond that mimics the native isopeptide bond.
