1. Le bromure d'éthidium (synonyme : homidium, moins couramment novidium, babidium ou RD 1572), abrégé en BET, BEt ou EtBr, est un composé organique aromatique possédant un ammonium quaternaire de formule chimique C21H20BrN3. C'est un produit toxique et mutagène utilisé comme médicament et marqueur moléculaire.
2. Ethidium bromide (or homidium bromide,[1] chloride salt homidium chloride)[2][3] is an intercalating agent commonly used as a fluorescent tag (nucleic acid stain) in molecular biology laboratories for techniques such as agarose gel electrophoresis. It is commonly abbreviated as EtBr, which is also an abbreviation for bromoethane. To avoid confusion, some laboratories have used the abbreviation EthBr for this salt. When exposed to ultraviolet light, it will fluoresce with an orange colour, intensifying almost 20-fold after binding to DNA. Under the name homidium, it has been commonly used since the 1950s in veterinary medicine to treat trypanosomiasis in cattle.[4] The high incidence of antimicrobial resistance makes this treatment impractical in some areas, where the related isometamidium chloride is used instead. Although ethidium bromide is said to be mutagenic on some circumstances of exposure, evidence shows that it is relatively safe and its alleged high toxicity is largely a myth.[5]
