Chloro-Functionalized Photo-crosslinking BODIPY for Glutathione Sensing and Subcellular Trafficking

Glutathione (GSH) is one of major antioxidants inside cells that regulates oxidoreduction homeostasis. Recently, there have been extensive efforts to visualize GSH in live cells, but most of the probes available today are simple detection sensors and do not provide details of cellular localization. A new fluorescent probe (pcBD2-Cl), which is cell permeable and selectively reacts with GSH in situ, has been developed. The in situ GSH-labeled probe (pcBD2–GSH) exhibited quenches fluorescence, but subsequent binding to cellular abundant glutathione S-transferase (GST) recovers the fluorescence intensity, which makes it possible to image the GSH–GST complex in live cells. Interactions between probe and GST were confirmed by means of photo-crosslinking under intact live-cell conditions. Interestingly, isomers of chloro-functionalized 4,4-difluoro-4-bora-3a,4a-diaza-s-indacene (BODIPY) compounds behaved very distinctively inside the cells. Following co-staining imaging with MitoTracker and mitochondria fractionation upon lipopolysaccharide-mediated reactive oxygen species induction experiments showed that pcBD2–GSH accumulated in mitochondria. This is the first example of a live-cell imaging probe to visualize translocation of GSH from the cytosol to mitochondria.