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  • Review Article
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Synthetic fluorescent sensors for studying the cell biology of metals

Nature Chemical Biology volume 4, pages 168–175 (2008)Cite this article

A Corrigendum to this article was published on 01 August 2008

This article has been updated

Abstract

Metals are essential for sustaining all forms of life, but alterations in their cellular homeostasis are connected to severe human disorders, including cancer, diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases. Fluorescent small molecules that respond to metal ions in the cell with appropriate selectivity and sensitivity offer the ability to probe physiological and pathological consequences of the cell biology of metals with spatial and temporal fidelity. Molecular imaging of normal and abnormal cellular metal ion pools using these new chemical tools provides a host of emerging opportunities for visualizing, in real time, aspects of metal accumulation, trafficking, and function or toxicity in living systems. This review presents a brief survey of available synthetic small-molecule sensor types for fluorescence detection of cellular metals.

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Figure 1: A generalized model of cellular metal ion homeostasis.

Rebecca Henretta

Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4: Live-cell imaging with small-molecule fluorescent probes for metal ions.
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7

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  • 26 June 2008

    In the version of this article initially published, the chemical structures for S3 and RS2 in Figure 6 were incorrect. The error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the University of California, Berkeley, the Dreyfus Foundation, the Beckman Foundation, the American Federation for Aging Research, the Packard Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, the US National Science Foundation (CAREER CHE-0548245) and the US National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIH GM 79465) for funding our laboratory's work on metal sensors. D.W.D. thanks the Chemical Biology Graduate Program sponsored by the US National Institutes of Health (T32 GM066698) for support, and E.L.Q. acknowledges a Branch graduate fellowship from the University of California, Berkeley.

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  1. Department of Chemistry, 532A Latimer Hall, University of California, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

    Dylan W Domaille, Emily L Que & Christopher J Chang

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Domaille, D., Que, E. & Chang, C. Synthetic fluorescent sensors for studying the cell biology of metals. Nat Chem Biol 4, 168–175 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio.69

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