A highly specific and sensitive turn-on fluorescence probe for hypochlorite detection and its bioimaging applications

• Published in: RSC advances Vol. 9; no. 28; pp. 15926 - 15932
• Main Authors: Jin, Lei, Tan, Xiaoxue, Dai, Lihui, Sheng, Liqiang, Wang, Qingming
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Royal Society of Chemistry 21.05.2019; The Royal Society of Chemistry
• Subjects: Aldehydes; Chemical sensors; Chemistry; Chemoreceptors; Coumarin; Fluorescent indicators; Medical imaging; Oxidation; Selectivity
• ISSN: 2046-2069; 2046-2069
• DOI: 10.1039/c9ra01457h

Development of high performance fluorescent chemosensors for the detection of ClO − in vitro and in vivo is very desirable, because many human diseases are caused by ClO − . In this paper, a highly selectivity and sensitive fluorescent probe, EDPC , based on 3-acetylcoumarin, was synthesized, which could respond to ClO − and exhibit an "off-on" mode in Tris-HCl buffer (pH = 7.2, 10 mM, 50% C 2 H 5 OH) solutions. The detection limit of the EDPC probe for ClO − was as low as 1.2 × 10 −8 M. Moreover, the high selectivity and high sensitivity of EDPC towards ClO − are attributed to the oxidation reaction between the C-O of the coumarin lactone and the C&z.dbd;C formed by aldol condensation and the mechanism was further verified using ESI-MS and DFT. Additionally, the concentrations of ClO − in real water were also calculated using the EDPC probe and showed good recovery. Finally, the distribution of intracellular endogenous ClO − was gained by confocal fluorescence microscopy in living HEK293T cells. A new probe, EDPC, was designed and synthesized for highly specific and sensitive detection of ClO − with a fast response time in living cells.