Immunostaining methods
have generally been used not only for biological
studies but also for clinical diagnoses for decades. However, recently,
for these methods, improved rapidity and simplicity have been required
for relevant techniques in laboratory research and medical applications.
To this end, we present here a novel approach for designing fluorescent
molecular rotor probes, i.e., N
3-modified
thioflavin T (ThT) derivatives, which enabled specific detection of
interesting protein targets with sensitive fluorescence turn-on. As
an example, we synthesized N
3-(d-desthiobiotinyl-PEGylated) thioflavin T (ThT-PD) and N
3-(cortisolyl-PEGylated) thioflavin T (ThT-PC)
that carried d-desthiobioin and cortisol, respectively,
via PEG linkers. Compared to those of the probes without the targets,
ThT-PD and ThT-PC exhibited around 27- and 8-fold fluorescence intensities,
respectively, with the target streptavidin and anti-cortisol antibody
in excess of saturation, enabling quantitative detection of the targets.
Furthermore, we successfully demonstrated the feasibility of ligand-tethering N
3-ThT derivatives by the rapid specific staining
of glucocorticoid receptors in cells, which was completed within only
several minutes using ThT-PC after cell fixation, whereas it took
∼24 h for immunostaining to capture the corresponding fluorescence
images.