An Aggregation-Induced Fluorescence Probe for Detection H₂S and Its Application in Cell Imaging

Monitoring hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) in living organisms is very important because H₂S acts as a regulator in many physiological and pathological processes. Upregulation of endogenous H₂S concentration has been shown to be closely related to the occurrence and development of tumors, atherosclerosis, neurodegenerative diseases and diabetes. Herin, a novel fluorescent probe HND with aggregation-induced emission was designed. Impressively, HND exhibited a high selectivity, fast response (1 min) and low detection limit (0.61 μM) for H₂S in PBS buffer (10 mM, pH = 7.42). Moreover, the reaction mechanism between HND and H₂S was conducted by Job's plot, HR-MS, and DFT. In particular, HND was successfully employed to detect H₂S in HeLa cells.