Recent progress of dual-responsive fluorescent probes for polarity and analytes

Polarity, as an indicator of the cellular microenvironment, regulates cell functions in conjunction with bioactive molecules including proteins, ROS, RNS, RSS, etc. Their synergistic effect is closely linked to the emergence and advancement of atherosclerosis, diabetes, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. Accordingly, monitoring the collaborative changes to polarity and related biomolecules in real time is important and illustrates their biological and pathological roles. Fluorescence imaging revealed substantial benefits and prospects for the identification of the micro-environment and analytes in organisms due to its high resolution, non-invasiveness, and real-time monitoring features. In this review, we summarized progress made in research on multifunctional fluorescent probes for the simultaneous tracking of polarity and analytes in the past five years. Our focus centered on the design approaches, spectral properties and biological utilization of current multifunctional fluorescent probes for detecting polarity and analytes, and we analyzed their limitations and prospects. We anticipate that this review will inspire a panoramic understanding of the relationship between polarity and various biologically active molecules, and promote the further design of new probes for a deeper illustration of invisible biomechanisms.