A purine-based fluorescent probe for HS detection and imaging of cells.

Hydrogen sulfide (HS) is a gas with a toxic odor that plays an irreplaceable role in physiological activities within the mammalian body. Therefore, it is important to do the distribution and quantitative detection of HS in mammalian cells. In this paper, a fluorescence probe (EDPH) based on purine scaffold was designed and synthesized with high sensitivity and good selectivity. HS induced ether bond breakage in EDPH, resulting in a significant redshift of the absorption band (from 370 nm to 500 nm) with a Stokes shift of 130 nm. After the addition of HS, the fluorescence intensity of EDPH showed a good linear correlation with the concentration of HS, which enabled the quantitative detection of HS with a low limit of detection (41 nM). Finally, the EDPH was applied to the cellular Hele, and the probe has good cellularity imaging capability for the detection of HS in living systems.