美国霍华德休斯医学研究所Luke D. Lavis小组发展了一个通用的方法来优化和功能化红移罗丹明类染料。 该研究于2020年7月27日发表于《自然—方法学》。

该研究团队报告了一个对罗丹明类染料在生物环境中的行为进行理性解释的框架，并提出了对该类染料的一种通用化学修饰方法，该修饰可以优化长波长染料变体并实现便捷的、具有不同化学基团的染料功能化。这个策略产生红移的“Janelia Fluor”（JF）染料，可用于在细胞和活体中的生物成像实验。

据悉，扩大荧光染料的调色板对于推动生物成像的前沿发展至关重要。罗丹明类的染料由于其优异的生物利用度和亮度仍然是小分子荧光团中的佼佼者，然而其激发在远红或者近红外的染料变体由于倾向于采用一种亲脂性不发荧光的形式，性能较差。

附：英文原文

Title: A general method to optimize and functionalize red-shifted rhodamine dyes

Author: Jonathan B. Grimm, Ariana N. Tkachuk, Liangqi Xie, Heejun Choi, Boaz Mohar, Natalie Falco, Kathy Schaefer, Ronak Patel, Qinsi Zheng, Zhe Liu, Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz, Timothy A. Brown, Luke D. Lavis

Issue&Volume: 2020-07-27

Abstract: Expanding the palette of fluorescent dyes is vital to push the frontier of biological imaging. Although rhodamine dyes remain the premier type of small-molecule fluorophore owing to their bioavailability and brightness, variants excited with far-red or near-infrared light suffer from poor performance due to their propensity to adopt a lipophilic, nonfluorescent form. We report a framework for rationalizing rhodamine behavior in biological environments and a general chemical modification for rhodamines that optimizes long-wavelength variants and enables facile functionalization with different chemical groups. This strategy yields red-shifted ‘Janelia Fluor’ (JF) dyes useful for biological imaging experiments in cells and in vivo.

DOI: 10.1038/s41592-020-0909-6

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-020-0909-6