Mismatched fluorescent probes with an enhanced strand displacement reaction rate for intracellular long noncoding RNA imaging.

We design mismatched fluorescent probes to directly monitor the long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) in living cells. The introduction of mismatched bases in the fluorescent probe greatly enhances the strand displacement reaction rate toward the target lncRNA. These mismatched probes can monitor the intracellular lncRNA expression level in various cell lines and discriminate cancer cells from normal cells, holding great potential in fundamental biomedical research and clinical disease diagnosis.