AIEgen-Based Lifetime-Probes for Precise Furin Quantification and Identification of Cell Subtypes.

Abstract

Biochemical sensing probes based on aggregation-induced-emission luminogens (AIEgens) are widely used in biological imaging and therapy, chemical sensing, and material sciences. However, it is still a great challenge to quantify the targets through fluorescence intensity of AIEgen probes due to their undesirable aggregations. Here, a PyTPA-ZGO probe with three lifetime signals for precise quantification of furin is constructed: the lifetime signal 1 and signal 2 comes from AIEgen PyTPA-P (τ_Pn ) and inorganic nanoparticles Zn₂ GeO₄ :Mn²⁺ -NH₂ (τ_Zn ), respectively, while the lifetime signal 3 is marked as the composite dual-lifetime signal (CDLS_n , <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow><mi>C</mi> <mi>D</mi> <mi>L</mi> <msub><mi>S</mi> <mi>n</mi></msub> <mo>=</mo> <mfrac><msub><mi>τ</mi> <mrow><mi>Z</mi> <mi>n</mi></mrow> </msub> <msub><mi>τ</mi> <mrow><mi>P</mi> <mi>n</mi></mrow> </msub> </mfrac> </mrow> </math> ). In contrast, the fluorescence intensity signal of PyTPA-P shows defectively quantitative performance. Furthermore, it is found that the CDLS_n exhibits higher significant differences than the two other lifetime signals (τ_Pn and τ_Zn ) thanks to its wide range between the maximum and minimum signal values and small standard deviation. Therefore, CDLS_n is further used to accurately identify cell subtypes based on the specific concentration of furin in each subtype. The lifetime criterion can realize precise quantification, and it should be a promising direction of AIEgen-based quantitative analysis in the future.