A twist six-membered rhodamine-based fluorescent probe for hypochlorite detection in water and lysosomes of living cells

Abstract A novel six-membered rhodamine-based fluorescent probe (6G-ClO) was developed from 2-formyl rhodamine (6G-CHO) and used for hypochlorite detection in water and HUVEC cells. Different from planar penta cycle of rhodamine spirolactam, there was a twist six-membered spirocyclic hydrazone in 6G-ClO optimized by Gaussian software at DFT/B3LYP/6-31G(d) level. The high selectivity, high sensitivity and fast response of 6G-ClO towards ClO- would be attributed to the twist six-membered spirocycle. Test-strip prepared with 6G-ClO was successfully used to semi-quantitatively indicate the concentration of ClO- in water. 6G-ClO can also quantitatively detect the concentration of ClO- in tap water and swimming pool water. The detection limit of 6G-ClO was as low as 12 nM. The co-localization staining of HUVEC cells further verified that 6G-ClO could specifically accumulate in lysosomes and capture exogenous/endogenous ClO- in living lysosomes. 6G-ClO would be a practical probe for real-time monitoring of ClO- in the biological and real water samples.