It is membrane permeable, therefore permitting intracellular cross-linking, has high purity, is non-cleavable, and is water-insoluble (it must be dissolved in a polar organic solvent such as DMF or DMSO before addition to sample.

[3] A study was done looking at the application of size exclusion chromatography in the purification of cross-link peptides within samples.

[7] Disuccinimidyl suberate's reactivity toward primary amines allows it to serve as a cross-linking agent for proteins, without toxic side-products and forming peptide bonds with the lysine residues in a single step.

In a study on blood substitutes, DSS was shown to cross-link Hemoglobin intramolecularly, yielding a relatively stable protein (polymerized Hb or polyHb), whose oxygen affinity was almost halved compared to that of native Hb.

This was shown to be reversed when Hemoglobin was copolymerized with bovine serum albumin (BSA), showing very little change in auto-oxidation and oxygen affinity compared to the native Hb.