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Intra-molecular triplet energy transfer is a general approach to improve organic fluorophore photostability

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Abstract

Bright, long-lasting and non-phototoxic organic fluorophores are essential to the continued advancement of biological imaging. Traditional approaches towards achieving photostability, such as the removal of molecular oxygen and the use of small-molecule additives in solution, suffer from potentially toxic side effects, particularly in the context of living cells. The direct conjugation of small-molecule triplet state quenchers, such as cyclooctatetraene (COT), to organic fluorophores has the potential to bypass these issues by restoring reactive fluorophore triplet states to the ground state through intra-molecular triplet energy transfer. Such methods have enabled marked improvement in cyanine fluorophore photostability spanning the visible spectrum. However, the generality of this strategy to chemically and structurally diverse fluorophore species has yet to be examined. Here, we show that the proximal linkage of COT increases the photon yield of a diverse range of organic fluorophores widely used in biological imaging applications, demonstrating that the intra-molecular triplet energy transfer mechanism is a potentially general approach for improving organic fluorophore performance and photostability.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tri-Institutional Training Program in Chemical Biology, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, NY, USA

    Qinsi Zheng & Scott C. Blanchard

  2. Department of Chemistry, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Steffen Jockusch & Héctor D. Abruña

  3. Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Gabriel G. Rodríguez-Calero

  4. Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, NY, USA

    Zhou Zhou, Hong Zhao, Roger B. Altman & Scott C. Blanchard

Authors
  1. Qinsi Zheng
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  2. Steffen Jockusch
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  3. Gabriel G. Rodríguez-Calero
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  4. Zhou Zhou
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  5. Hong Zhao
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  6. Roger B. Altman
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  7. Héctor D. Abruña
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  8. Scott C. Blanchard
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Correspondence to Scott C. Blanchard.

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Zheng, Q., Jockusch, S., Rodríguez-Calero, G.G. et al. Intra-molecular triplet energy transfer is a general approach to improve organic fluorophore photostability. Photochem Photobiol Sci 15, 196–203 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1039/c5pp00400d

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