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Updated: Nov 15, 2025

Specific Labeling of Mitochondrial Nucleoids for Time-lapse Structured Illumination Microscopy
Published on: June 4, 2020
The application of amide units in the construction of neutral functional dyes for mitochondrial staining
1College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Material Science, Soochow University, 199 Ren'Ai Road, Suzhou 215123, China. ge_jianfeng@hotmail.com.
Abstract:
To develop a new class of neutral fluorescent dyes with mitochondrial staining capacity, a series of functional dyes were obtained from Nile Red (2a-e) and coumarin (3a-e) with different amide compounds via Suzuki coupling reactions. The Nile Red derivatives (2a-e) emitted red fluorescence (590-660 nm) and coumarin derivatives (3a-e) showed blue emission (455-490 nm) in organic solvents. In addition, they exhibited high fluorescence quantum yields (0.27-0.98) in organic solvents and excellent photostability (>92%). Moreover, all of them possessed low cytotoxicity. More importantly, Nile Red borate (2) and coumarin borate (3) only accumulated in lipid droplets, while after being modified by different amide compounds, dyes 2a-e and 3a-e could successfully target mitochondria in HeLa cancer cells via confocal fluorescence experiments. This work provides a new strategy for the design of neutral cellular probes for mitochondrial staining.
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