Photo-lysine

Photo-lysine, a new lysine-based photo-reactive amino acid, captures proteins that bind lysine post-translational modifications.

Photo-lysine is designed and synthesized by incorporating a photo-cross-linker (diazirine) into the side chain of natural lysine. Photo-lysine, which is readily incorporated into proteins by native mammalian translation machinery, can be used to capture and identify proteins that recognize lysine post-translational modifications (PTMs), including ‘readers’ and ‘erasers’ of histone modifications.