Design and synthesis of a novel colorimetric fluorescent probe for selective detection of sulfur dioxide in SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells and its application in Traditional Chinese Medicines

摘要： Sulfur fumigation has attracted more and more attention as one of the important post-harvest processing methods for some Traditional Chinese Medicines (TCMs) in the last decade. However, sulfur-fumigated TCMs have recently emerged as a controversial topic due to their potential detrimental effect on the safety and efficacy, as some sulfur-fumigated TCMs contain lots of sulfur dioxide derivatives. Additionally, high levels of the sulfur dioxide derivatives could cause some diseases and dangerous environmental pollutant. In this work, a fast response time, low limit of detection and high fluorescence quantum yield probe DTCC was designed and synthesized to detect SO2 derivatives based on coumarin-thiophene dye which was fused with a coumarin moiety and 2-thiophenecarboxaldehyde. Probe DTCC exhibited fast response time (less than 10 s), satisfactory selectivity for SO2 derivatives in the presence of other ROS and excellent sensitivity for SO2 derivatives with low limit of detection (0.23 μM) and widely linear range (0～100 μM). Furthermore, probe DTCC was successfully applied in fluorescent imaging in SH-SY5Y neurobalstoma cells with excellent membrane permeability and stability. It was also employed for monitoring the total SO2 derivatives in several real TCMs sample. These results illustrated that probe DTCC has an excellent capability for monitoring SO2 derivatives in living cells and real TCMs sample.