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Updated: Feb 7, 2026

Visualization of Endoplasmic Reticulum Subdomains in Cultured Cells
Published on: February 18, 2014
Endoplasmic reticulum-targeted two-photon turn-on fluorescent probe for nitroreductase in tumor cells and tissues
An Xu1, Yonghe Tang1, Weiying Lin1
1Institute of Fluorescent Probes for Biological Imaging, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Jinan, Jinan, Shandong 250022, PR China.
Abstract:
Hypoxia conditions could increase the activity of intracellular nitroreductase (NTR) and lead to many malignant diseases. Therefore, monitoring the activity of NTR is of great significance to study the related diseases. Organelles play crucial roles in the metabolism of living cells. In these organelles, the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) possesses single membrane structure, and it is the largest organelle in the cell. ER performs the synthesis, processing and modification of proteins and lipid, stabilizing the intracellular Ca2+ concentration and other physiological functions in living cells. Therefore, it is of great significance to develop ER-target probes in living system. Toward this goal, a new endoplasmic reticulum-targeted two-photon fluorescence turn-on NTR probe Na-NTR-ER is designed and synthesized. Probe Na-NTR-ER has been proved to display high sensitivity (36 ng/mL) and selectivity to NTR. Particularly, probe Na-NTR-ER has been successfully applied for the monitoring of NTR in ER with a high the Pearson's colocalization coefficient as 0.90 in HeLa cells and cancerous mouse tissues up to the depth of 100 μm with significant fluorescence signals.
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