A fluorescent turn-on probe for highly selective detection of cysteine and its bioimaging applications in living cells and tissues

Due to the abnormal concentration of cysteine (Cys) related to various diseases, it is of great significance in disease diagnosis to monitoring Cys under pathophysiological conditions. Fluorescence probe capable of fast detecting Cys would be beneficial to the study of mechanisms of certain diseases. In this paper, we designed and synthesized a novel fluorescent probe LC-Cys, which employed the acrylate group and alpha, beta-unsaturated ketone as the two response groups. It could swiftly respond to Cys within 10 min, and exhibit satisfactory sensitivity and excellent selectivity to Cys. Furthermore, probe LC-Cys can be conveniently used to detect cysteine in living HepG2 cells and tissues with low cytotoxicity, indicating it would have great promise for biological applications.