Triggering On/Off States of Photoswitchable Probes in Biological Environments

The use of hybrid systems for which the change in properties of one component triggers the change in properties of the other is of outmost importance when "on/off" states are needed. For such a reason, azobenzene compounds are one of the most used probes due to their high photoswitching efficiency. In this study, we consider a new derivative of azobenzene interacting with different lipid membrane phases as a versatile fluorescent probe for phase recognition. By means of a multiscale approach, we found that the cis and trans conformers have different positions and orientations in the different lipid membranes (DOPC for the liquid disordered phase and DPPC for the gel phase), and these have a profound effect on the optical properties of the system, for both one and two photon absorption. In fact, we found that the cis state is the "on" state when the probe is inserted into the DOPC membrane, while it is in the "off" state in the DPPC membrane. This behavior enhances the selectivity of this probe for phase recognition, since the different environments will generate different responses on the same conformer of the probe. The same effect is found for the fluorescence anisotropy analysis, for which the trans (cis) isomer in DOPC (DPPC) presents a fast decay time. Due to the "on/off" effect it is possible to screen the different membrane phases via fluorescence decay time analysis, making this new probe versatile for phase detection.