Fluorescuojančio klampos jutiklio pagrįsto boro dipyrometeno (BODIPY) grupe fotofizikinės savybės lipidų membranose

Viscosity is an essential parameter of biological systems as it helps to maintain both cell structure and function. Therefore, viscosity sensing could easily become a prominent technique for discovering serious illnesses at a microscopic level. This can be achieved using fluorescent molecular rotors whose structural design produces sensitivity to the viscosity of the surrounding environment. One of the most widely used molecular probes are centred around the BODIPY group. However, as this technique is relatively new, appropriate molecular rotors have yet to be discovered since they usually depend on viscosity and are affected by temperature and polarity. Thus, the search for the most reliable molecular rotor is continued to this day. In this work, BODIPY-ER and BODIPY-PM, the two new viscosity-sensitive fluorescent probes were investigated. BODIPY-ER and BODIPY-PM exhibited more favourable properties regarding the sensitivity to the temperature, polarity and viscosity compared to the well-known BODIPY-C10. However, only BODIPY-PM was further studied because it worked extremely well with lipid membranes. Measurements with liposomes were conducted to yield an understanding of how the molecule would act in vivo since lipid membranes represent a simplified plasma membrane model. Further analysis of BODIPY-PM supplied that it is a useful molecular rotor that can sense viscosities of various (Lβ, LO, LD) phases in both LUVs and GUVs formations as well as already allowing to assign the corresponding viscosity values from produced calibration curves. Thus, BODIPY-PM could potentially become an integral fluorescent molecular rotor for the viscosity sensing in the lipid membranes.