Plasma Membrane Staining With Fluorescent Hybrid Benzothiadiazole And Coumarin Derivatives: Tuning The Cellular Selection By Molecular Design

In this work, two new hybrid benzothiadiazole-coumarin derivatives have been designed and applied as selective live cell fluorescence imaging probes. The developed dyes had their photoproperties evaluated and proved to be stable emitters. DFT calculations have been used to shed some light on the photophysical properties observed for both fluorophores and explained the obtained data. The lipophilic structures selectively stained the plasma membrane of both live and fixed cells of several tumoral and healthy lineages. Comparison of the novel hybrid fluorogenic dyes with the commercially available CellMask proved the preference for plasma membrane staining of the dyes. Finally, zebrafish embryos have been used as complexes models and these embryos were selectively stained, thus indicating the advantages of the hybrid dyes also for multicellular staining in comparison with the commercial dye.