Fluorescent Probes for Sensing and Imaging Biological Hydrogen Sulfide

Abstract Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is an important endogenous biological signal molecule that plays an essential role in various pathological and physiological processes. Abnormal expression of H2S in vivo is associated with the occurrence and development of many diseases. Therefore, sensing biological H2S level and distribution is significant and has been extensively studied presently. A few reviews about H2S sensing and imaging have been reported, most of which focus on the sensing mechanisms and construction of probes. In this review, we firstly summarized and classified the H2S‐activated fluorescent probes over the past 5 years according to sensing modality and then mainly discussed their biological applications, including detection of physiological and pathological processes, diagnosis of diseases, and disease treatments. It is expected that this review can deepen the readers′ understanding of the biological role of H2S and provide them with biomedical background knowledge for the construction of the H2S probes.