Bis(p-nitrophenyl) phosphate or BNPP is an organophosphate. It is an enzyme inhibitor for carboxylesterase and glycosyltransferases, and a model compound for the hydrolysis of DNA by phosphodiesterases. The neutral compound has the chemical formula ; at physiological pH, it exists as the conjugate base .
Applications BNPP is used as a substitute for DNA to study the enzymatic hydrolysis of phosphodiesters, and to evaluate synthetic enzyme mimics. While the compound was first synthesised in the 1950s or 1960s, it only became widely used beginning in the 1990s. It has several advantages as a model compound for this reaction: it reacts more quickly than many natural phosphodiesters, and the leaving group, nitrophenol, is readily identified using spectrophotometry.
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