title: Long-term fluorescent cellular tracing by the aggregates of AIE bioconjugates.
abstract: There is a great demand for long-term cellular tracers because of their great importance in monitoring biological processes, pathological pathways, therapeutic effects, etc. Herein we report a new type of fluorescence "turn-on" probe for tracing live cells over a long period of time. We synthesized the fluorogenic probe by attaching a large number of tetraphenylethene (TPE) labels to a chitosan (CS) chain. The resultant TPE-CS bioconjugate shows a unique aggregation-induced emission (AIE) behavior. It is nonfluorescent when dissolved but becomes highly emissive when its molecules are aggregated. The AIE aggregates can be readily internalized by HeLa cells. The cellular staining by the TPE-CS aggregates is so indelible that it enables cell tracing for as long as 15 passages. The internalized AIE aggregates are kept inside the cellular compartments and do not contaminate other cell lines in the coculture systems, permitting the differentiation of specific cancerous cells from normal healthy cells.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Division of Biomedical Engineering, Institute for Advanced Study, and Institute of Molecular Functional Materials, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) , Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China.
authors.forename: Zhengke
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Sijie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Jacky W Y
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Lam
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Qin
authors.forename: Ryan T K
authors.initials: RT
authors.lastname: Kwok
authors.forename: Ni
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.forename: Qiaoling
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Ben Zhong
authors.initials: BZ
authors.lastname: Tang
mesh_terms: D000114:Acetylene / Q000031:analogs & derivatives* / Q000737:chemistry; D015374:Biosensing Techniques; D048271:Chitosan / Q000737:chemistry*; D005453:Fluorescence; D005456:Fluorescent Dyes / Q000138:chemical synthesis / Q000737:chemistry*; D006367:HeLa Cells; D006801:Humans; D015394:Molecular Structure; D013050:Spectrometry, Fluorescence
chemical_list: D005456:Fluorescent Dyes; C044736:phenylacetylene; D048271:Chitosan; D000114:Acetylene