β-Mercaptoethanol can act as an enzyme reactivator in systems necessitating reduction for activation, and has been commonly used to reduce disulfide bonds in order to separate protein subunits for use in electrophoresis. This product can also be used to form o-Phthalaldehyde-beta-mercaptoethanol (OPAME), a fluorogenic reagent shown to detect amino acids based on its reaction with primary amines. More recently OPAME has been used to distinguish between ssDNA/dsDNA and even single base mismatches in the hybridization of DNA. It is widely used for retarding oxidation of biological compounds in solution.
