Efficient Polymer Pendant Approach toward High Stable Organic Fluorophore for Sensing Ultratrace Hg²⁺ with Improved Biological Compatibility and Cell Permeability

Abstract

A convenient and efficient method to eliminate the aggregation effect of organic photoelectric sensing materials and to improve biological compatibility and cell permeability as well was developed by hanging organic fluorophores on a polymer chain, for example, fluorescein fluorophores had been controllably hung on polyacrylamide main chains with a 1:2 stoichiometric ratio by a simple copolymerization strategy. The results showed that introduction of water-soluble bioactive polyacrylamide main chains into fluorescein fluorophores via covalent bonds could effectively improve their optical stability by deteriorating π–π stack and charge-transfer interactions among different fluorophores. More importantly, the resultant materials possessed low toxicity and excellent cell permeability ten times larger than their precursor fluorescein fluorophore, which made it express an especially turn-on fluorescent response to ultratrace Hg2+ both in aqueous and living cells by forming stable 5-member-ring complexes with Hg2+ with a correlation coefficient of 0.997 and a low detection limit of 4.0 × 10–10 mol·L–1. This work provides promising insight into constructing some practical sensing materials for environmentally-friendly biological analyses.

Mercury Toxicity and Detection Using Chromo-Fluorogenic Chemosensors

“…With the spirolactum ring opening mechanism, several Hg 2+ selective fluorescent turn-on sensors were reported. The polyacylamide-fluorescein based sensor 42 was reported for the fluorescent turn-on sensing of Hg 2+ (λ em = 515 nm, λ ex = 460 nm) in PBS buffer (pH = 7.0) [70]. Sensor 42 (Figure 14) showed turn-on fluorescent response to Hg 2+ due to the complexation-induced opening of spirolactum ring with the detection limit of 0.4 nM.…”

Ag-β-Cyclodextrin-Graphene Oxide Ternary Nanostructures with Peroxidase-Mimicking Activity for Hg2+ Detection

“…Hg 2+ pollution, considering as an example, has occurred here and there during the past several decades and led to severe diseases and caused giddiness, nausea, diarrhea, insomnia, convulsions, coma, neurasthenia, and tremors. 21−23 Sustained efforts were devoted to detecting Hg 2+ , such as atomic absorption, 24,25 chromatography, 26,27 electrical analysis method, 28,29 fluorescence spectrophotometry, 30,31 and colorimetric analyses. 32,33 Among all of the methods identified, nanoenzymebased colorimetry is one of the most promising detection techniques.…”

“…After the culture medium was changed with different concentrations of Ag-β-CD-GO, they were further incubated for 48.0 h at 37 °C. The cytotoxicity of Ag-β-CD-GO was calculated from a microplate reading 30 by comparing the viable cell number treated with Ag-β-CD-GO against those untreated under the same conditions.…”

Acenaphtoquinoxaline as a selective fluorescent sensor for Hg (II) detection: experimental and theoretical studies

“…However, some prepared sensors have much more detection limit to Hg 2+ ion detection in high sensitivity, most of these receptors are difficult to prepare, or the reactions are not cost-effective. Herein, we prepared a fluorescent sensor by organic synthesis, which has some superior as simple operation, low-cost starting material, avoiding by-product, high yield, and in short reaction time [ 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 ].…”