N-Fmoc-α-sulfo-β-alanine: a versatile building block for the water solubilisation of chromophores and fluorophores by solid-phase strategy.

An easy and efficient solid-phase synthesis strategy to obtain rapidly water-soluble chromophores/fluorophores in highly pure form has been developed. This first successful use of N-Fmoc-α-sulfo-β-alanine as a SPPS building block opens the way to the future development of promising direct "on-resin" peptide labelling and water-solubilising methods.