Rational design of a fluorescent probe and its applications of imaging and distinguishing between exogenous and endogenous H2S in living cells

Abstract

Hydrogen sulfide (H2S), a recognized environmental pollutant, comes from a wide range of sources. For example, H2S will be produced in the process of plant protein corruption, the decomposition of domestic sewage and garbage, food processing (wine brewing), etc. and once the concentration is too high, it will cause significant damage of environment and human body. Besides H2S is an important gas signal molecule in vivo, which can be transferred through lipid membrane. Its existence level is closely related to many diseases. If we can “visually” trace the transmembrane transmission of hydrogen sulfide, it will be very helpful for the study of oxidative stress processes, cell protection, signal transduction and related diseases closely related to H2S. Although some probes can detect H2S in environment, cytoplasm and organelles, there are few reports on the release and internalization of H2S. In this work, we report a H2S fluorescence probe that can retain on the cell membrane, named PCM. The probe PCM can not only detect endogenous and exogenous H2S, but also distinguish them, this provides a general strategy for the construction of probes to detect other biomarkers. In addition, PCM has been successfully applied to the detection of endogenous and exogenous H2S in zebrafish, which has the potential to become a new chemical tool and provide help for the research of H2S-related diseases.