Proflavine


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 mutagenic effect on DNA by intercalating between nucleic acid base pairs. It differs from most other mutagenic 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 absorbs strongly in the blue region at 445 nm with molar extinction coefficient of c. 40,000.