Liquid core fluorescent organic nanoprobes: Long-term stability and highly selective lipid droplets bio-imaging

Lihua Tang; Didi Hu; Jingyu Feng; Longchun Li; Yingcui Bu; Hongping Zhou; Xiaoping Gan

doi:10.1016/j.talanta.2023.125169

Liquid core fluorescent organic nanoprobes: Long-term stability and highly selective lipid droplets bio-imaging

Talanta. 2024 Jan 15:267:125169. doi: 10.1016/j.talanta.2023.125169. Epub 2023 Sep 8.

Authors

Lihua Tang¹, Didi Hu¹, Jingyu Feng¹, Longchun Li¹, Yingcui Bu², Hongping Zhou³, Xiaoping Gan⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Science, Anhui Agricultural University, 230036, Hefei, PR China.
² School of Science, Anhui Agricultural University, 230036, Hefei, PR China. Electronic address: byc@ahau.edu.cn.
³ College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Anhui University, 230601, Hefei, PR China.
⁴ School of Science, Anhui Agricultural University, 230036, Hefei, PR China; Key Laboratory of Agricultural Sensors, Ministry of Agriculture Rural Affairs, 230036, Hefei, PR China. Electronic address: gan-xp@ahau.edu.cn.

PMID: 37690418
DOI: 10.1016/j.talanta.2023.125169

Abstract

Lipid droplets (LDs) are important subcellular organelles that play a huge role in cell metabolism and growth. In this study, we synthesized two LDs fluorescent probes with benzothiadiazole (BTH) as electron acceptor and triphenylamine (TPA) as electron donor, which named as TPA-BTH1 and TPA-BTH2, respectively. Meanwhile, we introduced long alkyl chain to the probe as a shielding group and LDs targeting enhancement group. The results showed that the two probes were too sensitive to solvents' polarity because of the D-A structures possessed twisted intramolecular charge-transfer (TICT) effect. Furthermore, we prepared the two probes into nanoprobes by nanoprecipitation, which named as TPA-BTH1-20 and TPA-BTH2-20, respectively. The nanoprobes also had excellent fluorescence emission abilities and biocompatibility, as well as high photostability and accurately target LDs ability, which could be successfully applied in cell fluorescence imaging experiments.

Keywords: High stability; LDs; Liquid core; Nanoprobe.

MeSH terms

Fluorescent Dyes* / chemistry
Lipid Droplets* / chemistry
Optical Imaging

Substances

Fluorescent Dyes