Novel dual-site fluorescent probe for monitoring cysteine and sulfite in living cells

Xin Guo; Lili Xia; Jinxin Huang; Yiming Wang; Yueqing Gu; Peng Wang

doi:10.1039/c8ra01683f

Novel dual-site fluorescent probe for monitoring cysteine and sulfite in living cells

RSC Adv. 2018 Jun 8;8(38):21047-21053. doi: 10.1039/c8ra01683f.

Authors

Xin Guo¹, Lili Xia², Jinxin Huang², Yiming Wang¹, Yueqing Gu², Peng Wang²

Affiliations

¹ Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory for Interventional Medical Devices, Huaiyin Institute of Technology Huaian Jiangsu Province 223003 China.
² Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Engineering, China Pharmaceutical University Nanjing 210009 China wangpeng159seu@hotmail.com.

Abstract

Fluorescent probes have been considered to be efficient tools for the visualization of physiological and pathological processes. Herein, a dual-site fluorescence probe denoted as LC-1 was developed for the detection of cysteine (Cys) and its metabolite SO₃ ^2-. The probe was shown to be highly sensitive to Cys and SO₃ ^2- with a turn-on mode fluorescence signal through two emission channels under excitations at wavelengths of 320 nm and 440 nm. Notably, the LC-1 probe was also observed to be satisfactorily sensitive to Cys and SO₃ ^2- in the presence of other amino acids and reactive oxygen species (ROS). Meanwhile, LC-1 was shown to have low cytotoxicity and was successfully applied for imaging the metabolism of Cys in living cells.