An effective approach to develop targetable and responsive fluorescent probes for imaging of organelles based on cresyl violet scaffold

Fluorescent probes combined with confocal microscopy are recognized as a powerful tool for imaging living cells and even organelles due to their high sensitivity and resolution. However, many of analyte-activatable and organelle-targetable fluorescent probes are developed via tedious attempts, and a relatively predictable method to design such probes is still lacking. Herein, we put forward an effective synthetic strategy to construct both targetable and responsive probes for organelles based on the cresyl violet scaffold. The approach allows access to a variety of organelle-targeting fluorescent probes for an analyte of interest via introducing the corresponding targeting and recognition groups to the 5- and 9-positions of cresyl violet, respectively. The potency of the approach is exemplified by its application to develop four cresyl violet-based fluorophores with different organelle-targeting groups, and a mitochondrion-targeting ratiometric probe capable of imaging Pd0 in living cells.