A Highly Selective Fluorescence Turn-On Probe for the Sensing and Bioimaging of Hypochlorite Anion in Aqueous Media

A newly designed and structurally characterized 2,6-diformyl-4-methyl-phenol based moiety detects the hypochlorite ions as low as 75.9 nM selectively in DMSO-H2O (1:9, v/v) solution (100 mM HEPES buffer, pH 7.4) based on oxidation cleavage reaction of the thioacetal linkage. To establish this reaction based pathway in favor of sensing hypochlorite ions, the detailed spectroscopic studies have been carried out systematically supported by theoretical (DFT) studies. The efficacy of this non-cytotoxic probe has been checked by acquiring the fluorescence images of the distribution of the hypochlorite (ClO-) ion in living cells.