Like ethidium, proflavine is a nucleic-acid binding dye that intercalates, or inserts itself between base pairs.
Proflavine found some use as an antiseptic at one point (as far as I know, that day has passed). It is one of the earliest known intercalators. Unlike ethidium, its fluorescence actually goes down upon binding to DNA; this is the more common case for fluorescent DNA-binding drugs. See the spectrum of proflavine cation here.
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