We have developed a novel ratiometric probe, TPE-TE, monitoring SO2 with distinct ratiometric fluorescence signals in mammalian cells, mouse embryonic fibroblast, and zebrafish.

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) plays a key role in the progression of human illnesses, such as autoimmune and auto-inflammatory diseases, infectious diseases, diabetes, and cancer, etc. In this work, we have discribed a novel probe, TPE-TLE, which remarkably displayed AIE property and ratiometric fluorescence emission profiles in the presence of H2O2. This ratiometric fluorescent probe with AIE property exhibits outstanding features such as the well-resolved emission peaks, high sensitivity, high selectivity, low cytotoxicity, and good cell-membrane permeability. These excellent attributes enable us to demonstrate the ratiometric imaging of endogenously produced H2O2 in macrophages and cancer cells based on the novel ratiometric probe with AIE property for the first time. By comparing two kinds of cells, it is firstly found that cancer cells should contain much more endogenous H2O2 than macrophages. We expect that TPE-TLE will be useful fluorescent platform for the development of a variety of ratiometric fluorescent probes with AIE property to achieve unique biological applications.

Ribonucleic acid (RNA) and hydrogen sulfide (H2S) are important genes and gaseous signal molecules in physiological environment. However, simultaneous investigation of distribution and interrelation of RNA and H2S in living systems is restricted by lack of functional molecular tools. To address this critical challenge, the development of TP‐MIVC is described as the first paradigm of the probes that can concurrently report ribonucleic acid and hydrogen sulfide with distinct fluorescence signals in the cancer cells, zebrafish, and living animals. The advantageous features of the probe include high stability, low background fluorescence, high sensitivity, and two‐photon imaging property. Significantly, regardless of normal mice or tumor mice, tumor tissues exhibit stronger fluorescence intensity than other organs. More interestingly, it is found that TP‐MIVC is capable of distinguishing normal mice and tumor mice by in vivo imaging. This study may open a new pathway for distinguishing malignant and benign tumor by fluorescence imaging of RNA.

In this work, we developed a single fluorophore core with different substituents that can exhibit either outstanding AIE or two-photon properties.

In this study, we describe two novel alkyl chains-based fluorescent probes with large Stokes shift. Both probes have been successfully applied for sensing the cell membrane and mitochondria in different living cell lines.