Recent progress in developing fluorescent probes for imaging cell metabolites

Abstract

Cellular metabolites play a crucial role in promoting and regulating cellular activities, but it has been difficult to monitor these cellular metabolites in living cells and in real time. Over the past decades, iterative development and improvements of fluorescent probes have been made, resulting in the effective monitoring of metabolites. In this review, we highlight recent progress in the use of fluorescent probes for tracking some key metabolites, such as adenosine triphosphate, cyclic adenosine monophosphate, cyclic guanosine 5'-monophosphate, Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH), reactive oxygen species, sugar, carbon monoxide, and nitric oxide for both whole cell and subcellular imaging.

Keywords: fluorescent probes; imaging; metabolites.

Figure 1.

Examples of FP for ATP visualization. (A) Small molecule FP; (B) nanomaterial based FP; (C) genetically encoded FP. Reprinted with permission from [29, 30, 34]. Reprinted with permission from [29]. Copyright (2009) American Chemical Society. Reprinted with permission from [30]. Copyright (2015) American Chemical Society. Reproduced from [34]. CC BY 4.0.

Figure 2.

Integration of common groups and their application examples for mitochondrial metabolite probes design: (A) TPP cation. Reprinted with permission from [182]; (B) indolium cation. Reprinted with permission from [178]; (C) rhodamine cation. Reprinted with permission from [175]; (D) pyridinium cation. Reprinted with permission from [176]; (E) mitochondrial localization sequence. Reprinted with permission from [34] and selection nanomaterials for visualizing mitochondrial metabolites: (F) s-GQDs. Reprinted from [183]; (G) DQAsome. Reprinted with permission from [184]. Reprinted with permission from [182]. Copyright (2017) American Chemical Society. Reprinted from [178], Copyright (2016), with permission from Elsevier. Reprinted with permission from [175]. Copyright (2017) American Chemical Society. Reprinted from [176], Copyright (2018), with permission from Elsevier. Reproduced from [34]. CC BY 4.0. Reproduced from [183] with permission of The Royal Society of Chemistry. Reproduced from [184] with permission of The Royal Society of Chemistry.

Figure 3.

Integration of typical groups and their application examples for (A) nucleus; (B)–(D) lysosome; (E) ER; (F)–(H) Golgi apparatus localized fluorescent probes. Reprinted with permission from [, –228]. Reproduced from [213] with permission of The Royal Society of Chemistry. Reprinted with permission from [222]. Copyright (2015) American Chemical Society. Reprinted from [223], Copyright (2016), with permission from Elsevier. Reproduced from [224] with permission of The Royal Society of Chemistry. Reprinted from [225], Copyright (2017), with permission from Elsevier. Reproduced from [226] with permission of The Royal Society of Chemistry. Reproduced from [227] with permission of The Royal Society of Chemistry. Reprinted from [228], Copyright (2020), with permission from Elsevier.