Colorimetric and fluorescence detection of G-quadruplex nucleic acids with a coumarin-benzothiazole probe

A colorimetric and red-emitting fluorescent dual probe for G-quadruplexes was devised with a conjugated coumarin-benzothiazole scaffold. Its significant and distinct changes in both color and fluorescence enable the label-free and visual detection of G-quadruplex structures. In addition, this probe gives a distinct strong emission response to the nucleoli in fixed cells imaging, which might be attributed to the interaction between the probe and rDNA G-quadruplex based on the chromatin immunoprecipitation assay. All these results suggest its promising application prospects in the G-quadruplex research field.