A new version of ResearchHub is available.Try it now
Paper
Document
Download
Flag content
0

A Mitochondrial-Targeting Near-Infrared Fluorescent Probe for Visualizing and Monitoring Viscosity in Live Cells and Tissues

Published
Jul 5, 2019
Show more
Save
TipTip
Document
Download
Flag content
0
TipTip
Save
Document
Download
Flag content

Abstract

The intracellular viscosity is closely related to many functional disorders and diseases. Especially, abnormal mitochondrial viscosity changes are one of the distinct indications in metabolite diffusion as well as mitochondrial metabolism. In this work, we report a novel fluorescent probe (NI-VIS), which uses quinoline as an acceptor group and employs a TICT mechanism (twisted intramolecular charge transfer) to detect viscosity. NI-VIS features a good mitochondrion targeting ability and near-infrared emission. NI-VIS possesses a highly sensitive response toward viscosity changes in aqueous environments. As the viscosity of a DPBS-glycerol system increased from 1.0 to 999 cP, NI-VIS exhibited a hundred-fold enhancement in fluorescence. We demonstrated that after the treatment with ionophores, NI-VIS could identify the variation of mitochondrial viscosity in HeLa cells. The probe also recognized the decrease of mitochondria viscosity during starvation-induced mitophagy. More importantly, NI-VIS was successfully applied to visualize the viscosity variation in cirrhotic liver tissues. Our trial with zebrafish suggested this probe could map the microviscosity in vivo. These findings reveal that NI-VIS can serve as a powerful tool to monitor viscosity of biological samples and shows broad potential applications in the biomedical field.

Paper PDF

This paper's license is marked as closed access or non-commercial and cannot be viewed on ResearchHub. Visit the paper's external site.