Novel amino-reactive derivatives of lanthanide-based luminescent labels of enhanced brightness and metal retention were synthesized and used for the detection of complementary DNA oligonucleotides by molecular beacons. Time-resolved acquisition of the luminescent signal that occurs upon hybridization of the probe to the target enabled the avoidance of short-lived background fluorescence, markedly enhancing the sensitivity of detection, which was less than 1 pM. This value is about 50 to 100 times more sensitive than the level achieved with conventional fluorescence-based molecular beacons, and is 10 to 60 times more sensitive than previously reported for other lanthanide-based hybridization probes. These novel luminescent labels should significantly enhance the sensitivity of all type of nucleic acid hybridization probes, and could dramatically improve the detection limit of other biopolymers and small compounds that are used in a variety of biological applications.

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Luminescent lanthanide ion complexes are distinguished by unique light emitting properties that enable both highly sensitive detection of lanthanide labels attached to biomolecules and contrast imaging of various micro objects (cells, nanoparticles, etc.). Previously, we synthesized amine-reactive cs124-based luminescent lanthanide chelates with improved brightness and metal retention. Here we report the synthesis of new thiol-reactive derivatives of the same compounds including bromoacetamido-, and maleimido- forms of cs124 and cs124CF3 fluorophores. Maleimido-compounds displayed exceptional reactivity instantaneously coupling to thiols at physiological conditions at micromolar probes concentrations. Surprisingly, they displayed strong quenching by adjacent maleimido-group, which was completely eliminated after reaction with thiols, thereby enabling their simple detection by monitoring the light emission of the reaction mixture. This reaction can be used for hyper-sensitive determination of biologically important sulphydryl compounds (e.g. glutathione, co-enzyme A, etc.) in time-resolved mode.

New luminescent lanthanide chelates containing thiol-, amine-, and click-reactive groups in antenna-fluorophore moieties were synthesized. The chelates include diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid (DTPA) coupled to two types of chromophores: 7-amino-4-trifluoromethyl-2(1H) quinolinone, and 7-amino-4-trifluoromethyl-2-alkoxyquinoline. The synthesized compounds were characterized using NMR, light absorption, steady-state and time-resolved fluorescent spectroscopy. Some of the compounds displayed high brightness with Tb 3+ , Eu 3+ , and Dy 3+ . Obtained reactive lanthanide chelates can be easily attached to biological molecules. The probes demonstrated high performance in molecular beaconbased DNA hybridization assays (sub-pico molar detection limit), in bacterial proteome labeling, and in live cell imaging.