Monoamine oxidase (MAO) has two isoforms, MAO-A and MAO-B,which showdifferent functions,and thus selective fluorescence imaging is important for biological studies.C urrently,h owever,s pecific detection of MAO-A remains ag reat challenge.H erein, we report an ew strategy for specific imaging of MAO-A through the design of fluorogenic probes combining the characteristic structure of an inhibitor of the target enzyme along with propylamine as arecognition moiety.The high specificity of our representative probe is demonstrated by imaging MAO-A in different live cells such as SH-SY5Y (high levels of MAO-A) and HepG2 (high levels of MAO-B), and further validated by western blot analyses.T he superior specificity of the probe may enable the accurate detection of MAO-A in complex biosystems.I mportantly,the use of the characteristic structure of an inhibitor,a s demonstrated in this work, mays erve as ag eneral strategy to design specific recognition moieties for fluorogenic probes for enzymes.