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Proflavine, also called proflavin and diaminoacridine, is an acriflavine derivative, a disinfectant bacteriostatic against many gram-positive bacteria. It has been used in the form of the dihydrochloride and hemisulfate salts as a topical antiseptic, and was formerly used as a urinary antiseptic.
Proflavine is also known to have a mutagenesis effect on DNA by intercalating between nucleic acid . It differs from most other mutagenesis components by causing basepair-deletions or basepair-insertions and not substitutions. In the presence of light, proflavine can induce double-stranded breaks in DNA.
Proflavine is a fluorescent dye that is sometimes used in microscopic in-vivo imaging due to its intercalation properties. However, there was concern that women exposed to proflavin could develop cervical cancer since they have mutagenesis potential. However, the retrospective analysis performed by Pantano et. al. demonstrated that there is no increased cervical cancer risk after exposure to proflavine.
In astronomical spectroscopy proflavine present in interstellar clouds (derived from the modification in of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons by ) strongly absorbs in the blue region at 445 Nanometre. This makes difficult the recording of the spectrum of stars that lie behind the clouds.
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