Red fluorescent AIE bioprobes with a large Stokes shift for droplet-specific imaging and fatty liver diagnosis

Yu-Ting Cai; Yan-Chao Liu; Ying-Ying Gu; Ya-Qi Zhu; Yong-Hong Liu; Jing Chen; Yuan Yang; Ming-Xuan Liu

doi:10.1016/j.saa.2024.125325

Red fluorescent AIE bioprobes with a large Stokes shift for droplet-specific imaging and fatty liver diagnosis

Spectrochim Acta A Mol Biomol Spectrosc. 2024 Oct 23:327:125325. doi: 10.1016/j.saa.2024.125325. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Yu-Ting Cai¹, Yan-Chao Liu¹, Ying-Ying Gu², Ya-Qi Zhu², Yong-Hong Liu¹, Jing Chen³, Yuan Yang⁴, Ming-Xuan Liu⁵

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Translational Medicine, Medical College, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou 225001 Jiangsu, China.
² School of Pharmacy, Nantong University, Nantong 226001, Jiangsu, China.
³ Institute of Translational Medicine, Medical College, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou 225001 Jiangsu, China. Electronic address: chenjing2018@yzu.edu.cn.
⁴ Department of Gastroenterology, The First Affiliated Hospital, Hengyang Medical School, University of South China, Hengyang 421001 Hunan, China. Electronic address: 2023010013@usc.edu.cn.
⁵ School of Pharmacy, Nantong University, Nantong 226001, Jiangsu, China. Electronic address: mingxuanliu@ntu.edu.cn.

PMID: 39490184
DOI: 10.1016/j.saa.2024.125325

Abstract

Lipid droplets (LDs) as spherical dynamic subcellular organelles, play an important role in various cellular functions such as protein degradation, lipid metabolism, energy storage, signal transduction, and membrane formation. Abnormal function of LDs will lead to a series of diseases and hence monitoring the status of LDs is particularly important. In this study, we synthesized a water-insoluble red fluorescent emitting small molecule fluorescent probe (TPE-TCF), which exhibited aggregation-induced emission (AIE) properties and enabled highly selective real-time imaging of LDs (Pearson's R value was 0.90). More interestingly, this probe was able to track the dynamic processes of LDs in living cells, including lipophagy, and monitor fatty liver disease in mice. Therefore, TPE-TCF with red fluorescence emission, good biocompatibility, large Stokes shift, AIE properties, LDs imaging, and fatty liver recognition capabilities can be practically used in more LDs-related diseases.

Keywords: AIE; Biological probe; Fatty liver; LDs; Large Stokes shift.