A novel coumarin-linked tetraphenylethene fluorescent probe for simultaneous sensing of ATP and GSH

Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) as the intracellular energy currency, and glutathione (GSH) as the regulator of redox homeostasis in the cell microenvironment, are all closely associated with numerous important physiological processes in living organisms. However, the fluorescent probes that can simultaneously detect ATP and GSH are rarely reported. Herein, a bifunctional coumarin-linked tetraphenylethene (TPE) probe P1 was successfully developed, which exhibits a red emission at 633 nm owing to the fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) from energy donor coumarin to energy acceptor TPE. P1 can detect ATP with a fluorescence turn-on response at 633 nm in the red channel by complexation-enhanced aggregation mechanism, and showed a ratiometric detection toward GSH through the disruption of the FRET process, accompanied by an increase in the blue channel at 467 nm and a decrease in the red channel at 633 nm. P1 also displays a superior sensitivity and high selectivity to ATP and GSH, with a detection limit of 20.80 nM for ATP and 3.47 mu M for GSH. Significantly, P1 can discriminate GSH from ATP and other analytes due to the different response times. Furthermore, P1 can localize mitochondria and has been discovered to be capable of imaging ATP and GSH in living cells and zebrafish.