Carbazole-conjugated-coumarin by enone realizing ratiometric and colorimetric detection of hypochlorite ions and its application in plants and animals.

Detection of hypochlorite ions (ClO) in the organisms is of great significance for finding effective treatments for inflammations and diseases. Recently, fluorescent probes have aroused wide public concern as one of the effective tools for detecting molecules and ions. Nevertheless, due to low sensitivity and poor biocompatibility, the effect of fluorescent probes for biological imaging is still not ideal. For this, we developed a novel ratiometric fluorescent probe, 7-(diethylamino)-3-((E)-3-(9-ethyl-9H-carbazol-3-yl)acryloyl)-2H-chromen-2-one (DCC), which could be used for colorimetric detection of ClO. Study showed that, the detection mechanism of DCC is that probe can be rapidly oxidized to an enoic acid by ClO, resulting in a series of changes in spectral properties. This mechanism was confirmed experimentally and verified by theoretical calculations. It is worth mentioning that DCC has not only been successfully applied to the detection of exogenous and endogenous OCl in living cells, but also used for the detection of ClO in zebrafish, and Arabidopsis.