Multicolor Photo‐Crosslinkable AIEgens toward Compact Nanodots for Subcellular Imaging and STED Nanoscopy |
| |
| Authors: | Xiaofeng Fang Xuanze Chen Rongqin Li Zhihe Liu Haobin Chen Zezhou Sun Bo Ju Yifei Liu Sean Xiao‐An Zhang Dan Ding Yujie Sun Changfeng Wu |
| |
| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China;2. State Key Laboratory on Integrated Optoelectronics, College of Electronic Science and Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun, China;3. State Key Laboratory of Membrane Biology, Biodynamic Optical Imaging Center (BIOPIC), School of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China;4. College of Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun, China;5. State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemical Biology, Key Laboratory of Bioactive Materials, Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Nankai University, Tianjin, China |
| |
| Abstract: | Aggregation induced emission (AIE) has attracted considerable interest for the development of fluorescence probes. However, controlling the bioconjugation and cellular labeling of AIE dots is a challenging problem. Here, this study reports a general approach for preparing small and bioconjugated AIE dots for specific labeling of cellular targets. The strategy is based on the synthesis of oxetane‐substituted AIEgens to generate compact and ultrastable AIE dots via photo‐crosslinking. A small amount of polymer enriched with oxetane groups is cocondensed with most of the AIEgens to functionalize the nanodot surface for subsequent streptavidin bioconjugation. Due to their small sizes, good stability, and surface functionalization, the cell‐surface markers and subcellular structures are specifically labeled by the AIE dot bioconjugates. Remarkably, stimulated emission depletion imaging with AIE dots is achieved for the first time, and the spatial resolution is significantly enhanced to ≈95 nm. This study provides a general approach for small functional molecules for preparing small sized and ultrastable nanodots. |
| |
| Keywords: | aggregation‐induced emission nanodots photo‐crosslinking specific labeling subcellular structures super‐resolution imaging |
|
|
