A novel long-wavelength fluorescent probe for selective detection of hydrogen sulfide in living cells

Abstract

Hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) plays a vital role as a critical biological messenger in numerous physiological and pathophysiological processes. It is necessary to detect H₂S to obtain important physiological and pathological information. Here, a novel long-wavelength probe (LC-H₂S) was developed based on the selective thiolysis reaction of dinitrophenyl ether. LC-H₂S is nearly non-fluorescent (Φ_F = 0.032), but the reaction product (LC-OH) emits strong fluorescence at 644 nm when excited at 571 nm (Φ_F = 0.228). The long wavelength of LC-H₂S makes it less susceptible to background fluorescence from biological matrices and to photo damage on fluorescence imaging of H₂S. With the advantages of the turn-on probe for H₂S including high sensitivity, high selectivity, good biocompatibility and low toxicity, the probe has been successfully used for imaging H₂S in living cells.