Publications by authors named "Wei-Long Cui"

The biological microenvironment includes important parameters such as viscosity, polarity, temperature, oxygen content and pH. In particular, abnormal cell viscosity is associated with the development of major diseases. Sulphur dioxide (SO) serves not only as an essential atmospheric pollutant but also an influential signalling molecule in biological cells, predisposing individuals to increased respiratory disease.

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The green fluorescent protein (GFP) is a purely natural specialty protein that has been widely used to design synthetic fluorescent probes. In the present work we designed and synthesized a series of fluorescent compounds akin to GFP precursors by a one-step method, and investigated the luminescence properties of the fluorescent compounds by varying the substituents. We presented the first systematic summary of the photophysical data including extinction coefficients and fluorescence quantum yields for this class of fluorescent dyes.

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Lipid droplets (LDs) are simple intracellular storage sites for neutral lipids and exhibit important impact on many physiological processes. For example, the changes in the polar microenvironment inside LDs could affect physiological processes, such as lipid metabolism and storage, protein degradation, signal transduction, and enzyme catalysis. Herein, a new fluorescent chemo-sensor (Couoxo-LD) was formulated by our molecular design strategy.

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Giving the fact that mercury ions (Hg) is highly toxic, migratory and bioaccumulative and even very small amounts of mercury can cause serious damage to health, resulting in many diseases, such as abdominal pain, renal failure, nervous system damage. The content of mercury in drinking water quality standard of our country has been strictly limited. Therefore, it is of good research interest to develop a stable fluorescent probe capable of detecting the presence of mercury in biological cells.

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