<div>Although sulfur dioxide (SO<sub>2</sub>) finds widespread use in the food industry as its hydrated form, sulfite, a number of aspects of SO<sub>2 </sub>biology remain to be completely understood. Among the tools available for intracellular enhancement of SO<sub>2</sub>, most suffer from poor cell permeability and a lack of control over SO<sub>2</sub> release. We report 1,2-cyclic sulfite diesters as a new class of reliable SO<sub>2 </sub>donors that dissociate in buffer through a nucleophilic displacement to produce SO<sub>2 </sub>with tuneable release profiles. We provide data in support of the suitability of these SO<sub>2 </sub>donors to enhance intracellular levels of SO<sub>2 </sub>at an efficiency superior to sodium bisulfite, the most commonly used SO<sub>2</sub> donor for cellular studies.</div>
Ap revious versiono ft his manuscript has been deposited on ap reprint server (https://doi.org/10.26434/chemrxiv.9929618.v1) Supporting information and the ORCID identification numbers for the authors of this article can be found under https://doi.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.