Guanidinium thiocyanate

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Guanidinium thiocyanate is a chemical compound that can be used to deactivate a virus, such as the influenza virus that caused the 1918 "Spanish flu" so that it can be studied safely. Note: this compound may also be recognized as guanidine thiocyante. This is because guanidinium is the conjugate acid of guanidine and is called the guanidinium cation, [CH6N3]+.


As a chaotrope, it is also used as a general protein denaturant, which is presumably the mechanism for its aforementioned application.

Guanidinium thiocyanate is also used in the process of RNA extraction

[edit] External links