Dan Wu, Mingyue Ma, Meiling Zhang, Yannan Xiao, Haibo Yu, Zhihui Cheng

College of Environmental Sciences, Liaoning University

Xinfu Zhang, Yi Xiao

State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals, Dalian University of Technology

Yihang Shao

Shiyan North High School

The regulation factors of rhodamine spirolactam switch has captured great attention because of its great potential applications in super-resolution image and fluorescent probe fields. Herein, we developed two Hg²⁺ rhodamine probe bearing flexible ɑ-amino acid hydrazines, Rh-SH and Rh-MH, to investigate photo-operated rhodamine switch induced by Hg²⁺. The Hg²⁺ binding process with Rh-SH containing serine hydrazines moiety was more sensitive to UV light, owing to weak affinity with Hg²⁺. On the contrary, UV light had little effect on Hg²⁺ binding process of Rh-MH bearing methionine hydrazine group. The strong Hg²⁺ binding affinity of Rh-MH demonstrated a higher sensitivity to Hg²⁺, and detection limit of Rh-MH was 2.32 × 10^{− 6} M. Probe Rh-MH can also map the distribution of Hg²⁺ in mitochondria of MCF-7 cells. The modulation of binding affinity of flexible ɑ-amino acid hydrazine with Hg²⁺ might provide new opportunity and strategy to photo-promoted ring switch of rhodamine spirolactam.

Read the article here:   66-Hg2+rhodamine fluorescent probe bearing flexible ɑ-amino acid hydrazines and its photoactivation under UV light.pdf