HS- induced thiolysis reaction to regulate UV- and fluorescence spectra change and their bioimaging in living cells.

The design and synthesis of efficient probes for the detection of hydrogen sulfide is essential to explore the physiological role of such signaling molecules. A new probe，CDP containing 2-[(2,4-dinitrophenyl)thio]benzoic acid as responsive moiety was developed for H2S. After cleavage of responsive moiety occurs through a H2S-triggered nucleophilic reaction, the fluorescence of CDP was switched on. Up to 20-fold fluorescence enhancement toward H2S was observed and the detection limit was calculated to be as low as 307 nM. Moreover, this probe CDP was simple with good selectivity, high sensitivity and low cytotoxicity, which enabled it to detect H2S in solutions and exogenous/endogenous H2S in HepG-2 cells respectively.