Direct imaging of single-molecule and its movement is of fundamental importance in biology, but challenging. Herein, aided by the nanoconfinement effect and resultant high reaction activity within metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), the designed Ru(bpy)3 2+ embedded MOF complex (RuMOFs) exhibits bright electrochemiluminescence (ECL) emission permitting high-quality imaging of ECL events at single molecule level. By labeling individual proteins of living cells with single RuMOFs, the distribution of membrane tyrosine-protein-kinase-like7 (PTK7) proteins at low-expressing cells is imaged via ECL. More importantly, the efficient capture of ECL photons generated inside the MOFs results in a stable ECL emission up to 1 h, allowing the in operando visualization of protein movements at the cellular membrane. As compared with the fluorescence observation, near-zero ECL background surrounding the target protein with the ECL emitter gives a better contrast for the dynamic imaging of discrete protein movement. This achievement of single molecule ECL dynamic imaging using RuMOFs will provide a more effective nanoemitter to observe the distribution and motion of individual proteins at living cells.
Keywords: dynamic tracking; metal-organic frameworks; nanoconfined-enhanced emission; nanoemitter; single-molecule ECL.
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