Molecular weight modulated FRET based logic gate probes for lysosome Al3+ and CO detection

Abstract

The gas signaling molecules CO and Al³⁺ play important physiological roles in maintaining homeostatic processes in cells. Rapid monitoring of these two information molecules in the sub-organelle dimension has rarely been reported. To fill this blank, we proposed a new “molecular weight regulated FRET method” to construct new logic gate probes to monitor CO and Al³⁺ synergetically. We selected naphthalimide and rhodamine as energy transfer groups. Then we designed two silane probes, P-Si-CO and Si-CO, which display different chain lengths to investigate the probes' response to CO and Al³⁺. Si-CO with low molecular weight is more advantageous for generating significant FRET processes. To show the three-channel and dual detection function of the probe more intuitively, we constructed a novel logic gate model that can detect Al³⁺ and CO simultaneously. Si-CO also exhibited rewarding cell imaging effects for visualizing the anoxia and starvation process in lysosomes. This work provided a new method for constructing logic-gate probes for detecting Al³⁺ and CO based on regulating FRET theory.