Hydrogen sulfide (H2S)
contributes to human health and
prolongs the storage time of postharvest fruits and vegetables. At
the same time, H2S can cause a negative impact on some
foodstuffs and beverages, so an efficient probe to detect H2S is needed. Herein, a fluorescent turn-on responding probe SPy-DNs for H2S detection has been designed and
synthesized. SPy-DNs exhibited a red emission (608 nm),
large Stokes shift (111 nm), and a detection limit of a nanomolar
level (356 nM) in a dimethylformamide/phosphate-buffered saline (DMF/PBS)
(1:1, v/v, 10 mM, pH 7.4) solution. SPy-DNs can detect
H2S with ultrafast response within 4 s, which is faster
than the response of other reported probes. In addition, the applicability
of SPy-DNs to detect H2S has been determined
in the actual water samples, targeted mitochondria, and imaged H2S in living cells. Moreover, SPy-DNs was successfully
used as a tool to judge H2S levels in beer, which indicates
that SPy-DNs possesses the advantage of rapid detection
of H2S in foodstuffs.