Puromycin

Puromycin is an aminonucleoside antibiotic naturally produced by Streptomyces alboniger as a tyrosyl tRNA analog. It inhibits ribosomal protein synthesis process by causing premature chain termination acting as an analog of the 3′-terminal end of the aminoacyl-tRNA. Puromycin also acts as a reversible inhibitor of dipeptidyl-peptidase II (serine peptidase) and cytosol alanyl aminopeptidase (100μM, IC50=0.6μM). Puromycin is used as a selection marker gene (puromycin-N-acetyltransferase gene, pac) in eukaryotic/mammalian cells.
Puromycin has a wide variety of biological activities with inhibitory effect against bacteria, protozoa, parasitic worms, algae, plants, and mammalian cells.
Puromycin shows broad spectrum activity, particularly strong activity against gram positive microorganisms but weak activity against acid-fast bacilli and even weaker activity against gram negative microorganisms.
Puromycin has anti-cancer properties, inducing apoptosis in breast cancer cells. It has been shown that Puromycin induces apoptosis in MCF-7 breast cancer cells using an immunological assay to study apoptosis (the modulating effect of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1)). Puromycin at 0.5 microg/ml induced a high level of apoptosis in MCF-7 breast cancer cells, although there was still a non-negligible amount of synthesized protein. The activity of Puromycin was compared to 2 other protein synthesis inhibitors (cycloheximide and emetine), in which apoptosis occurred when protein synthesis was almost completely blocked.
Puromycin also showed antitumor activity in MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells, causing suppression of 45S pre-ribosomal RNA and upstream binding factor (UBF).
Furthermore, Puromycin was used to study the vascular smooth muscle cell viability after treatment in rabbit model.

Technical information
The suggested concentration of Puromycin in cell culture assays is 0.2-10-μg/mL. Therefore, it is recommended to dilute the ready made solution 1:1000-50,000.