posted on 2022-12-13, 18:14authored byYi Wang, Zhibin Li, Ge Guo, Yunsheng Xia
Exploring the etiology of liver injury is critical to
fundamental
science and precise treatment, which has not yet been achieved by
molecule imaging techniques. Herein, we manage to conquer this challenge
by spatiotemporally monitoring oxidative stress processes using the
proposed unit-emitting carbon dots (UE-C-dots) as fluorescent probes.
We discover and reveal that the UE-C-dots can specifically determine
hypochlorous acid (HClO) molecules, one of the important reactive
oxygen/nitrogen species (ROS/RNS) in liver injury, by an excited state
oxidation mechanism. Other ROS/RNS do not interfere with the assay
even if their concentrations are 1000 times higher than that of HClO
due to the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital level mismatch. Real-time
tomographic imaging demonstrates that different stimuli cause distinctly
different HClO bursts in both temporal and spatial dimensionalities.
Therefore, the measurement and analysis of temporal information substantially
extend our understanding on the relationships of hepatic oxidative
stress and corresponding physiological/pathological behaviors.