The mark of Mercury(II) in living animals and plants through using a BODIPY-based near-infrared fluorescent probe

Heavy metal pollution, especially mercury(II) contamination has caused severe hazards to human health and environmental security in recent years. Therefore, studies on the detection and control procedures towards residual mercury(II) with tools are significant. In view of the actual demand in vivo detection, we employed a dipyrromethene boron difluoride (BODIPY) core as the near-infrared (NIR) fluorophore and an aza-containing macrocyclic thioether as the recognition ligand to develop a new NIR fluorescent probe with good photostability, which could specifically respond mercury(II) ions with a turn-on NIR emission. This tracking agent had an excellent capability of quantitatively analysis and could be applied in the measurement of mercury(II) concentration in shrimp samples. Especially, the NIR emission around at 790 nm endowed it possessing an advantage in vivo imaging, and could be used to mark the level of mercury(II) pollution with insignificant interferences in living biological systems such as cells, zebrafish and mice. It was worth mentioning that the emission of this probe completely avoided the background fluorescence of chlorophyll in Arabidopsis thaliana to present the degree of mercury(II).