Ultrasensitive recognition of AP sites in DNA at the single-cell level: one molecular rotor sequentially self-regulated to form multiple different stable conformations.

The AP site is a primary form of DNA damage. Its presence alters the genetic structure and eventually causes malignant diseases. AP sites generally present a high-speed dynamic change in the DNA sequence. Thus, precisely recognizing AP sites is difficult, especially at the single-cell level. To address this issue, we provide a broad-spectrum strategy to design a group of molecular rotors, that is, a series of nonfluorescent 2-(4-vinylbenzylidene)malononitrile derivatives (), which constantly display molecular rotation in a free state. Interestingly, after activating the relevant specific-recognition reaction (, hydrolysis reaction of benzylidenemalononitrile) only in the AP-site cavity within a short time (approximately 300 s), each of these molecules can be fixed into this cavity and can sequentially self-regulate to form different stable conformations in accordance with the cavity size. The different stable conformations possess various HOMO-LUMO energy gaps in their excited state. This condition enables the AP site to emit different fluorescence signals at various wavelengths. Given the different self-regulation abilities of the conformations, the series of molecules, , can emit different types of signals, including an "OFF-ON" single-channel signal, a "ratio" double-channel signal, and even a precise multichannel signal. Among the derivatives, can sequentially self-regulate to form five stable conformations, thereby resulting in the emission of a five-channel signal for different AP sites . Thus, can be used as a probe to ultrasensitively recognize the AP site with precise fluorescent signals at the single-cell level. This design strategy can be generalized to develop additional single-channel to multichannel signal probes to recognize other specific sites in DNA sequences in living organisms.