High fidelity spatiotemporal imaging of mitochondria targeted by near infrared aggregation induced luminescence (AIE) probe

Mitochondrion is the center of cell energy metabolism, which has a high dynamic structure Its abnormal dynamic changes are closely related to Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, metabolic diseases and cancer Recently, Professor Guo Zhiqian and Professor Zhu Weihong of East China University of science and technology reported a kind of near-infrared aggregation induced luminescent probe targeting mitochondria, which realized the high fidelity spatiotemporal imaging of mitochondria and provided an important tool for the study of the dynamic changes of mitochondria Relevant achievements were published in adv function Mater (DOI: 10.1002 / ADFM 201808153) under the title of "High Fidelity Trading of spatial temporal mitochondria with rational design of aggregation induced emission processes" At present, due to the lack of high-performance molecular probes targeting mitochondria, the dynamic changes of high fidelity, real-time and capture mitochondria are still facing challenges The commercial mitochondrial probes, such as MTG and MTR, have intrinsic defects such as aggregation induced quenching effect and poor photostability, which can't really feed back the dynamic changes of mitochondria It is worth pointing out that the current target design strategy of mitochondrial probes is mainly based on the electrostatic interaction with the mitochondrial inner membrane, while the relationship between the charge density of the probe itself and the complex membrane environment in the cell is not well understood The research group innovated and developed a new type of parent fluorescence unit TCM of AIE Through rational molecular structure design, TPP cation unit of parent and lipophilic target group of AIE has controllable aggregation state and matched charge density, and obtained off on activated AIE mitochondrial probe, which successfully solved the problem of mitochondrial targeting AIE The dilemma between the hydrophilic and hydrophobic balance of the probe and the fluorescence activation characteristics is to achieve high signal-to-noise ratio and high fidelity mitochondrial spatio-temporal imaging Especially compared with commercial probes MTG and MTR, near infrared molecular probe tcm-1 has excellent optical stability and concentration independent targeting ability, which greatly overcomes the problems of photobleaching and over dyeing of commercial probes Tcm-1, as a probe, has the properties of activated fluorescence, near-infrared fluorescence emission and excellent targeting ability It also displays the information of mitochondrial dynamic distribution with high signal-to-noise ratio and high fidelity in three-dimensional space and time-resolved imaging Its performance is much better than that of commercial probes such as mitotracker green FM and mitotracker red FM Zhang Jie and Wang Qi, associate professors of 2014 doctoral students, are the co first authors of the article, and Guo Zhiqian and Zhu Weihong are the corresponding authors of the article The work has been carefully guided by academician Tian He The research results were jointly funded by the basic science center project of NSFC, major science and technology projects of Shanghai and excellent youth fund project of NSFC.