Straightforward access to water-soluble unsymmetrical sulfoxanthene dyes: application to the preparation of far-red fluorescent dyes with large stokes' shifts.

An efficient synthesis of water-soluble unsymmetrical sulforhodamine/sulforhodol fluorophores containing a single julolidine fragment is presented. Owing to their valuable spectral properties in aqueous buffers, these dyes, especially those bearing a free aniline or phenol moiety, are valuable components of fluorogenic probes for a variety of biosensing applications. A further extension of this synthetic methodology to unusual phenols, namely 7-N,N-dialkylamino-4-hydroxy coumarins has enabled us to provide a new family water-soluble dyes of large Stokes' shift with far-red spectral features.