LAUSR

Abstract Hypochlorous acid (HClO) plays critical biological roles in living systems, and abnormal accumulation of HClO could cause oxidative stress and lead to tissue damage and a range of diseases. Herein, we present an endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-targeting fluorescent probe (ER-NTE) for the detection of HClO in live cells and zebrafishes. The probe ER-NTE employed p-toluenesulfonamide as the ER-specific group, and used N,N-dimethylthiocarbamate as the recognition site for HClO. In response to HClO, the probe ER-NTE provided significant turn-on fluorescence signal (60-fold enhancement) within 2 min. Biological imaging experiments suggested that ER-NTE could specifically image exogenous and endogenous HClO in ER of living cells, and also could be applied for the detection of HClO in zebrafishes.