Toward a highly sensitive and selective indole-rhodamine-based light-up probe for Hg2+ and its application in living cells.

We herein designed and synthesized a light-up fluorescent probe L1 for Hg 2+ species, which is based on indole derivative and Rhodamine fluorophore. The new probe can show a linear response to Hg 2+ with high sensitivity and selectivity. As the Hg 2+ concentration changed from 0 to 450 μM, the fluorescence intensity of L1 at 575 nm changed from 50 to 6181 (∼120-fold). The detection limit of the probe was 5.0 × 10 −8 M. Besides, we have successfully applied L1 to monitor Hg 2+ species in living MCF-7 cells by way of fluorescence imaging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]