Department of Neuroscience , Mount Sinai School of Medicine , New York , New York 10029 , United States.
ACS Chem Neurosci. 2019 May 15;10(5):2481-2488. doi: 10.1021/acschemneuro.8b00734. Epub 2019 Feb 15.
Azobenzenes are the most widely studied photoswitches, and have become popular optical probes for biological systems. The cis configuration is normally metastable, meaning the trans configuration is always thermodynamically favored. The unique exception to this rule is an azobenzene having a two-carbon bridge between ortho positions, substitutions that lock the photoswitch in its cis configuration. Only thoroughly chemically characterized relatively recently, we describe the first applications of this locked-azobenzene (or "LAB") scaffold with two derivatives designed to control ion flow in pyramidal neurons in acutely isolated brain slices. Our LAB derivatives maintain most of the desirable photochemical properties of the parent scaffold, and work as designed in living cells. However, LAB derivitization changes the trans photostationary state from >85% of the parent photoswitch to about 50%, suggesting that careful design considerations must be given for future applications of the LAB scaffold in biological areas.
偶氮苯是研究最广泛的光开关，已成为生物系统中流行的光学探针。顺式构型通常是亚稳定的，这意味着反式构型在热力学上总是更有利。这个规则的唯一例外是一个在邻位之间有两个碳桥的偶氮苯，这种取代使光开关锁定在顺式构型。直到最近才被彻底化学表征，我们首次将这种锁定偶氮苯（或“LAB”）支架应用于两种衍生物，设计用于控制急性分离脑切片中锥体神经元中的离子流。我们的 LAB 衍生物保留了母体支架的大部分理想光化学性质，并按设计在活细胞中工作。然而，LAB 衍生化将反式光稳定状态从母体光开关的 >85%改变为约 50%，这表明在未来的生物领域应用 LAB 支架时必须给予仔细的设计考虑。
