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Scientific article
Open access
English

Planarizable push-pull probes : overtwisted flipper mechanophores

Published inChemPlusChem, vol. 82, no. 7, p. 1062-1066
Publication date2017
Abstract

Planarizable push–pull fluorescent probes, also referred to as flipper probes, have been introduced as conceptually innovative mechanophores that report on forces in their local environment in lipid bilayer membranes. The best flipper probes respond to a change from liquid disordered to solid ordered membranes with a red shift in excitation of 50–90 nm. A simultaneous increase in fluorescence lifetime and negligible background fluorescence from the aqueous phase qualifies these fluorescent probes for meaningful imaging in live cells. Here, we report that the replacement of methyl with isobutyl substituents along the scaffold of a dithienothiophene dimer strongly reduces fluorescence intensity but increases solvatochromism slightly. These trends imply that the large substituents in “leucine flippers” hinder the planarization in the first excited state to result in twisted intramolecular charge transfer (TICT). As a result of this overtwisting, the leucine flippers form interesting fluorescent micelles in water but fail to respond to changes in membrane order. These dramatic changes in function provide one of the most impressive illustrations for the hypersensitivity of fluorescent membrane probes toward small changes in their structure.

Keywords
  • Conformation analysis
  • Fluorescent probes
  • Membranes
  • Mechanophores
  • Push–pull chromophores
Research group
Citation (ISO format)
MACCHIONE, Mariano et al. Planarizable push-pull probes : overtwisted flipper mechanophores. In: ChemPlusChem, 2017, vol. 82, n° 7, p. 1062–1066. doi: 10.1002/cplu.201600634
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Identifiers
ISSN of the journal2192-6506
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Technical informations

Creation07/18/2017 11:12:00 AM
First validation07/18/2017 11:12:00 AM
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