Pyrene-Based "Turn-on" Fluorescent Polymeric Probe with Thioacetal Units in The Main Chain for Mercury(II) Detection in Aqueous Solutions And Living Cells.

A water-soluble polymeric PTA-Py with thioacetal units in the main chain was simply synthesized by direct polycondensation of 3, 6-dioxa-1, 8-octanedithiol, 1-pyrene formaldehyde and mPEG2k-SH. The probe PTA-Py showed a good fluorescence response to Hg 2+ ions due to the Hg 2+ -promoted deprotection reaction of thioacetal groups to regenerate the original 1-pyrene formaldehyde compound. After adding Hg 2+ to the PTA-Py solution, the fluorescence intensity (FI) gradually increased with increasing concentrations of Hg 2+ . Compared with other metal ions, the probe exhibited high sensitivity, good selectivity and rapid response to Hg 2+ . The low detection limits were 12.3 nM in ethanol-PBS buffer and 13.3 nM in water, respectively. The results implied that the simply synthesized water-soluble polymeric probe had potential applications in the rapid detection of Hg 2+ ions in aqueous solutions. Moreover, the polymeric PTA-Py showed high sensitivity for CH 3 Hg + with detection limits of 26.5 nM in ethanol/PBS buffer. In addition, PTA-Py can efficiently detect Hg 2+ ions in HeLa cells. The results demonstrated that a valuable method was developed for biocompatible polymeric sensors for Hg 2+ ions in biological and environmental samples. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.