Issue 3, 2017

Photoactivatable aggregation-induced emission probes for lipid droplets-specific live cell imaging

Abstract

Photoactivatable probes for lipid droplets (LDs)-specific live-cell imaging are powerful tools for investigating their biological functions through precise spatial and temporal control. Ideal photoactivatable probes for LDs imaging require high concentration accumulation of fluorophores in LDs, simple synthetic procedures, and excellent photoactivation efficiency. However, it is difficult to overcome these challenges by conventional fluorophores due to aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ). In this study, a new class of photoactivatable and LDs-specific fluorescent probes was developed based on dihydro-2-azafluorenones, which can easily undergo photooxidative dehydrogenation reaction to afford 2-azafluorenones with aggregation-induced emission (AIE) properties. Dihydro-2-azafluorenones as photoactivatable and LDs-specific probes display significant advantages of excellent photoactivation efficiency and lack of self-quenching in the aggregated state, and are expected to have broad applications in study of biological functions of LDs' through light-controlled spatiotemporal imaging.

Graphical abstract: Photoactivatable aggregation-induced emission probes for lipid droplets-specific live cell imaging

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
01 Nov 2016
Accepted
20 Dec 2016
First published
21 Dec 2016
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY license

Chem. Sci., 2017,8, 1763-1768

Photoactivatable aggregation-induced emission probes for lipid droplets-specific live cell imaging

M. Gao, H. Su, Y. Lin, X. Ling, S. Li, A. Qin and B. Z. Tang, Chem. Sci., 2017, 8, 1763 DOI: 10.1039/C6SC04842K

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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